First Person

Let the Negotiations Begin

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By Mary Werner

I think I've maintained my dignity as a department head throughout this job-search process, but just barely. I don't like being so invested in the results of a search. It reminds me too much of when I was on the other side of the hiring table in English.

As I mentioned in my first column, what has made this search for a new assistant professor unique -- and more stressful than usual -- is that my entire department, for once, agreed on a candidate. From avant-garde playwright to medievalist to Hollywood film specialist, they (we) were united in enthusiasm for this candidate. If he didn't take the job, we would be at one another's throats; that much was clear. People were taking over-my-dead-body stands about the other candidates. Much, therefore, was at stake in this candidate's saying yes.

After I made the offer, I had to stop myself from sending frequent, chatty e-mails about one or another nice thing about our department, our college, or our part of the country. Would that one little detail be the one that persuaded him? Or would one e-mail too many indicate desperation?

I let him take too long to decide. Three weeks. Too long to keep the other candidates waiting. Too long for my department to fret. Too long for him to ponder whatever other offer(s) he had.

I was confident that the terms we'd offered had been fair. The money was OK: low $40s. He had come back asking for $6,000 more, and we counteroffered with $4,000 more than our initial offer, contingent on his defending the dissertation. He asked for two courses off in the first year, and my boss agreed to give him one. Fair enough, given that we'd done the same for other recent hires who might or might not be finished with their dissertations when they arrived. He wanted extra research money, and the dean and I managed to finesse that into something we could live with -- some "startup" money stretched out over a few years.

Given that we'd done all that negotiation in the week after the initial deadline, I told our guy that when we eventually talked on Saturday, he would have to give me a straight yes or no. No more negotiating. No more questions. I would be away from home, at a college event, in the company of a bunch of students and faculty members, and I just wanted an answer.

Saturday arrives. Other faculty members start asking me whether the candidate has called. No. It's early; don't worry.

It's lunchtime. Still no call. Now I'm getting mad. He's had three weeks, and he needs to keep me sweating all day on the last day?

An administrator checks in, having seen me on my cell phone. No word yet, I tell him. I was just calling home to see whether the candidate had taken the coward's way out and e-mailed. Nothing there, thank goodness.

Five o'clock. I don't want him anymore. I don't care if all my colleagues love him. I don't care if we have to bring more candidates to campus. I don't like him anymore because he is torturing me. The three weeks I could live with. But these few hours have put me over the edge.

Six o'clock and I'm out for a drink with my faculty colleagues, trying not to talk. About anything. I'm a failure as a department chair, I'm a loser as a search chair, and I'm a wimp who let an A.B.D. push her around. I wouldn't go to the prom with him even if he did call now -- he's blown his chance.

The phone rings. It's him, of course.

I leave the table, and my colleagues know what's up. I feel their stares as I sneak around the corner into a room full of empty tables.

He has no answer. Wants to negotiate a bit more. Wants that second course release in the first year, to "jump-start" his research.

That does it.

"To tell you the truth," I say, "I don't like the message you're sending by asking me this." This guy needs to be a teacher as well as a researcher, and he needs to be willing to hit the ground running in both areas. I don't need a prima donna (primo don?).

I have no idea whether my dean would approve the extra course release, but it doesn't matter. It's now become a question of me and him, the future chair and the future assistant professor. If I cave now, I will never have any authority at all. I tell him no. My colleagues might hate me. With any luck, they'll depose me as chair. But I cannot give any more ground, even if it means losing him.

"That's your final position?" he asks, quietly. "I'm afraid so," I reply, not wavering. In fact, I'm feeling feisty, tough, invigorated. "Take it or leave it," I think but don't say.

"Well, I guess I'll see you in September, then" he says. I laugh. "We'll get the paperwork to you right away," I say. I don't hate him anymore. I have rewritten the last three weeks, the last eight hours: He wasn't torturing me; he was seriously pondering his future and his choices. He wasn't making me sweat so as to whip me into a state of nervous frenzy; he was waiting until he knew I'd be through with my meetings for the day.

He's a lovely young man and will be a joy to work with. That's what I tell myself. I know the negotiation process must have been nerve-racking for him, too, and I know he was getting lots of advice at his end. Were his advisers pushing him to ask for more? Or does he have a really inflated sense of his own worth? Will he be demanding when he gets here, or will he be a good departmental citizen? Will he be difficult, indecisive, petulant?

These kinds of questions will nag me periodically, I know, in the months before he comes on board. We got him, and I know that's a good thing. But sometimes I think I hear my mother's voice: "Be careful what you wish for ..."