Academic Job Offers

If you receive an academic job offer, express interest, and then take the time to carefully assess whether the offer is a good fit.  Try to reframe negotiation in this way: The goal of a negotiation is not to “win” against another group; it is about thinking as creatively and comprehensively as possible about resources you both can harness to start on a positive note.

In addition, not everything is a negotiation, sometimes you are simply asking for clarification or additional resources.

Here are some things you might want to negotiate or are for clarification on:

Salary

• Especially if this is a public institution, you can find the starting salaries of assistant professors in comparable or even the same department. Use this to help identify if you want to negotiate your salary. Salaries are often listed as 9 month, 10 month, or 12 months, so check for this language.
• Don’t forget many institutions that are research-intensive provide professors with “summer salaries” for the first 2-3 years. This is so you don’t have to teach and can work solely on your research.

Balance of research, teaching and service expectations

• What are the teaching expectations in the first 3 years? then the next three years before you are up for tenure? As about the teaching load, oftentimes framed by semester (example a 2-1 means two courses in the fall, one in the spring).
• Sometimes you can negotiate a lighter teaching load in the first year, later on you might ask if you can “buy out” teaching if you get a grant

Office and research space

• Were you able to see the office and research space that you will occupy? If not, feel free to ask for a virtual visit, a layout, or the general square footage.
• Will this space need renovation? A common delay for early faculty is that their lab spaces or offices haven’t been updated yet (or unforeseen delays occur during renovation). Make sure you know the size of the space and if it is actually structured in a way that allows you to fit the equipment you need into that space as well as the personnel you’ll have in the lab!

Startup funds

Startup funds vary with every school and every discipline. Almost all institutions now ask you to provide an equipment list and general budget as they decide on offers (sometimes they even ask you to send it before the campus visit!).

You might consider creating a “low, middle, high” budget sheet where you determine what is the minimum start up fund you would need to succeed for the first three years (typically to get to your first grant) and what would be the most ideal scenario (high). Aim to provide a higher estimation to institutions so you can negotiate from this starting point. In addition, think about reaching out to your network and asking if they can share with your their start up fund asks, especially if they are at a similar type of institution.

For start up funds, think about these questions:

• Can this cover all the necessary equipment, supplies, professional development, and personnel (students and staff) for you lab for the first three years? (remember a START UP fund is for 3 years, not up to tenure).
• Is it a lump sum or are there restrictions? For example is it split between equipment and students? Sometimes you can negotiation more for specific PARTS of the startup fund, or you can see if you can ask for unrestricted funds
• Timeframe? Typically the start up needs to be used in 2-3 years, can you negotiate from say, 2 years to 3?
• What is the most expensive equipment you need to be successful? Can it be shared amongst other faculty or departments? Think about if this could be a point of negotiation.

Other benefits and things to consider

• Is there a lump sum for relocation? do you need more than what they offered?
• If you need any type of sponsorship, can the department put you in touch with their international scholar’s office and what is the institution’s policy on sponsorship?
• Start date: do you need to some time to wrap up your PhD or postdoc or even gather some data so you can hit the ground running in your new faculty job? Sometimes you can ask to push by your start date by a semester or even up to a year
• Ask for clarification about health insurance, retirement, life insurance, public state pensions, private institutional retirement funds or pensions, sick leave, parental leave, etc. (usually this is all on an HR website)

We encourage you to discuss your offer and questions about negotiating with a career advisor and other mentors. Don’t forget in the fall the Faculty Job Search Series always runs a workshop on negotiating the faculty job offer!