How much does having competing offers benefit a job search?

Question

Due to personal reasons I have a strong preference to stay in a certain geographic region, and I will apply to all tenure track positions in this region. I would probably prefer to leave academia than take a tenure track job outside this region. My profile is strong enough I'm confident I would be able to get a R1 tenure track job if I apply broadly, but not strong enough to be confident I will be able to get a job in the region of interest.

I'm wondering whether I should still apply broadly, even for jobs I think I would have a low (but nonzero) chance of taking. In particular, I have heard:

• having one offer may increase the chances of getting another offer
• if you have upcoming interviews, you may be able to negotiate a longer time-frame to make a decision on an offer (and my ability to do this would be limited if I only applied to a few local schools)

This makes me think that it would be beneficial to apply broadly and use any potential offers as leverage to get a job I am more interested in. But I'm not sure if this is worth the effort it takes to put together a good application.

Answer 1

I personally think it's unethical to apply for jobs that you would not take in any circumstance. That type of game-playing is wasting real people's time.

I can't imagine it would ever help you get an offer to have an existing offer. There is certainly correlation in that having an offer means there's something in your application to justify giving you an offer and committees tend to be looking for similar things.

Competing offers help you in the negotiating after you have an offer, though that doesn't mean whoever you're negotiating with necessarily has anything to give, and if you're not actually willing to take the other offer you might end up negotiating yourself into looking like a conniving idiot when you first say you won't take the position unless they match some other offer and then come back with your tail between your legs when they say "sorry we'll have to go with our next choice then".

Answer 2

having one offer may increase the chances of getting another offer

This is not entirely inconceivable, but it’s also not entirely inconceivable that another job offer might actually deter some departments (particularly departments that are less highly ranked than the department that made you an offer) from making you an offer. Both of those scenarios are in any case fairly unlikely. Serious departments do not usually give much weight to this type of information before making an offer. (Source of my knowledge: former math department chair in the US.)

By contrast, as @BryanKrause said, having multiple offers can very possibly help you negotiate good terms after you have already received an offer.

As far as ethics is concerned, I also agree with @BryanKrause that applying to jobs you are absolutely not interested in is unethical. But beyond ethics, and beyond the fact that it wouldn’t really produce the effect you’re intending, I think it’s a bad idea for multiple reasons having to do with what might happen in various situations where things don’t quite go according to your plan. You risk not just upsetting other people, but possibly upsetting yourself, and setting yourself up for all sorts of dilemmas where you have to weigh competing desires (geography versus career) of yourself and/or family members, in a situation where you are essentially declaring in advance that you specifically want to avoid these types of dilemmas.

To summarize, if you think you might accept a job offer outside of your geographical target zone, then it’s reasonable to apply for such jobs. But if you have already made a decision that you wouldn’t take such a job under any circumstance, you are courting all sorts of unpleasant unintended consequences, and I think your plan is highly inadvisable. (Of course, it’s often the case with unethical behaviors that they invite negative consequences, but somehow in the current situation some of those consequences seem not directly related to the unethical nature of the behavior, so I thought it’s worth pointing out.)

Good luck with your job search in any case.

Answer 3

Something else to consider is that interviewing and getting job offers is a skill, which is hard to practice. If you do poorly in a job interview, you can generally reflect on your performance, identify areas of improvement, rehearse better for next time etc. Neither of those helps you if the interview was for the one job you really wanted. So from that angle, applying to other jobs is worthwhile even if just for the interviewing practice (provided you take the interview process seriously).

Another comment suggests that applying for jobs you would never take is wasting people's time and thus unethical, and I don't really disagree. Equally, never is a very long time. You might really like your prospective colleagues, or the campus, or something else about an offer, or simply not get any better offers at all, academia or not. So perhaps it's more that you are unlikely to take these jobs, unless somehow you are surprised by the circumstances. And the only way to find out is to apply, and take the process seriously.

Answer 4

Academics can't be any different to other employers insofar as their reaction to applicants whose main motive is in leveraging their interest to secure another job. Maybe not quite Hell hath no fury but it will be remembered when your face reappears.

So don't apply for jobs clearly outside your reasonably commutable radius after a careful study of your region's transportation links.

Another thing that is sometimes done - in the business world - is a bit of compromise on the part of the applicant who might be able to move their home so that the daily commute to the new job is less but the spousal commute and/or the social commute to old friends/family in your present region is still manageable. This might mean moving to an area with a better rail/air link to the new university campus.

Universities are major employers and are likely to have had to deal with this sort of issue before when hiring good staff. So if you are applying to a university whose research/faculty interests you strongly but which is close to your limit of viable commuting, it makes sense to be candid about this in your application as the hiring university's HR bureau might be able to help. It's a lot better than saying nothing about it and using the distant employer's interest to pressure another employer.

Answer 5

In my own experience, going straight from undergrad in Physics & Computer Science to Software Engineering for government contracts to Software Engineering in the FinTech space; you should be interviewing for companies and positions second on your list before interviewing with those first on your list. Across that decade of experience, I've worked at over five companies, jumping from job to job if the offer was better. Some would say this is morally questionable, but I disagree. Industry, academia, and government are different in ways, but have important similarities. They all have a budget and they all have tactics for exploiting us. It's important to arm yourself in the same way they do. Do you think they're only interviewing a single candidate? Of course not. Why would you exclude yourself from interviewing everywhere you could? Do not fall for the idea that it's morally correct to save yourself for a single employer.

Let's run the scenario: you interview at your second, third, or fourth choice. If the interviews go poorly, good, you got some practice before the real thing. If the interviews go well, good, you might get an offer before your first choice and you can use that as leverage when negotiating for the first choice position, assuming you get to the negotiating table. Finally, you interview at your first choice, and you're armed with the practice rounds you just performed in the weeks prior. This is not "stealing" resources from other companies. You are now simply playing the exact same game as them.