Career Talk

Hold Your Tongue, Part II

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By Jennifer S. Furlong and Julie Miller Vick

We received a lot of letters about our October column, "Hold Your Tongue," on changing jobs. So we thought we would revisit the topic of how to gracefully explain to potential employers why you're on the market again.

In the October column, we interviewed faculty members who had successfully moved to new jobs. They advised job candidates to keep quiet about their real reasons for leaving their old jobs. One professor we talked to said that in the few interviews where she had told a search committee about her troubled former department, it had been "a huge mistake." Instead, she advised, candidates should focus on the positives of what they like about the new opportunity.

Some readers, however, were surprised by that advice. Shouldn't job candidates be more forthright?, they wondered. "Won't so much close-mouthedness lead search committees to be suspicious of any assistant professor seeking a job?"

Keep in mind that different search committees have different priorities. Some interviewers will be terribly curious to know why you want to leave your old job, especially if your department or institution is famous for squabbles and strife. Other interviewers might focus their line of questioning on your credentials rather than your current situation. In that case, if your recommenders have discussed in their letters your reasons for leaving, the search committee's questions may have been already answered.

Still, while you should focus on showing your enthusiasm for the position you are seeking, you need to be prepared to explain why you want out of the position you are leaving. One reader summarized that dilemma nicely: "The challenge is that the question 'Why are you interested in coming here?' is a different question from 'Why were you looking in the first place?'"

Try to answer the latter question by offering an "objective" reason for your departure, such as the location or the type of institution. If pressed, you may have to discuss the more "intangible" reasons. Rather than casting aspersions about your department, which might leave the search committee with a bad feeling about you, respond in a way that focuses the panel's attention on you as a job seeker. You might say something like:

• "I didn't feel there was as good a fit as I had hoped."

• "The priorities of the department (or the university) were different from my own."

If you are pressed further, you should simply cite, in a calm manner, the actual facts, such as:

• "In the last 10 years, more than half the faculty has left the department."

• "A majority of new faculty members have had significant difficulty getting tenure."

Those facts can be offered without complaint or judgment. You do not want to be perceived as someone who speaks negatively about colleagues or has trouble functioning within an organization.

It is also important to be prepared to answer questions about specific people in your department. You may be interviewed by people who know (and like) colleagues you hope to leave behind. Difficult people tend to get a reputation as difficult, and you may be asked about a current or former colleague with whom you did not have the best relationship. Again, it's best not to sound judgmental or angry. Instead, focus on how your styles were different or some other objective reason.

Anyone embarking on a job search should have a strategy for dealing with the problem people in their world. That might be a difficult adviser, or it might be a colleague who disagrees with your methodology, has a very different working style, or is simply known to be a curmudgeon. If you are worried about being asked about a problem person, practice talking about your relationship with that person in terms that are as neutral as possible.

Another issue we touched on in the October column also brought in letters. We had interviewed a professor in the sciences about the challenges of moving a laboratory from one institution to another. Some readers were concerned that we had made it sound a lot simpler than it was.

One researcher who wrote in described how he had once transferred his lab from a research institution to a research hospital. While it was a smooth transition, he said, he was "amazed and surprised" by the level of bureaucracy involved, and dismayed to learn he was not the owner of resources and intellectual property in his lab that he had thought belonged to him. Instead, he discovered, they belonged to the institution.

Since then, this researcher, who is now a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, said he had witnessed several transitions that were draining for all involved. He asked us to issue this reminder: Junior faculty members should be aware that NIH (and a number of other granting agencies), for the most part, award grants to the research institute or the university, not to the individual scientist. Equipment and supplies purchased from that grant are legally the property of the institution, as are scientific notebooks and primary data.

Frequently, academic scientists who move to a different institute are able to obtain permission to move their equipment and supplies. That negotiation would presumably be more difficult if the investigator is leaving on bad terms. Every grant-making agency has its own policies, and someone in the sponsored-research office at your institution could probably give you a detailed overview on how to move a lab.

Changing institutions can be complicated for scientists. We strongly caution readers to be cognizant of ownership issues with respect to lab equipment and supplies as well as ideas. Anyone in the sciences or engineering who is contemplating a possible move needs to do some homework about those ownership issues well before starting to look for a new position.

Finally, a reader pointed out that some academics leave their jobs purely to seek a better opportunity. Maybe they want to improve their salary or work at a higher-ranked college. That reader wondered why we hadn't discussed those issues.

Certainly, seeking an opportunity that provides better remuneration and benefits is a good reason to move. If you went on the market at a moment when jobs in your field were tight, you may feel that having had few (or no) other offers at the time lessened your negotiating power. Or maybe your research has been well received, and you would now like to seek a position in a more prestigious or supportive department.

If either your market or your record have markedly improved, feel free to test the waters and to tell search committees your reasoning.

Raising the money issue too early on, however, can be risky. One of our readers, an academic in a business discipline, said it is more common for candidates in business-related disciplines to speak openly about seeking better compensation and prestige than those in other fields. And we concur.

Anyone who has successfully changed institutions will have a distinct story to tell. Some job candidates will negotiate the transition with ease. For others, it will be a challenge. Some will be pressed to explain what they disliked about their current employer; others will skate easily around the question. Because of that, job candidates may feel they are receiving conflicting advice. Well, you probably are.

We strongly suggest that you seek out mentors, colleagues, and friends who have gone through similar transitions and whose advice is trustworthy. If you can, try to find a candid adviser in your current department or institution who will be willing to guide you through your transition and speak on your behalf. Evaluate that person's advice carefully, consider your own needs and priorities, and then make a decision that seems best for you.

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Julie Miller Vick is senior associate director of career services and Jennifer S. Furlong is associate director at the University of Pennsylvania. Vick is co-author of The Academic Job Search Handbook (University of Pennsylvania Press), along with Mary Morris Heiberger, who was associate director of career services at Penn.