how to tell the interviewing department that you have an offer

how to tell the interviewing department that you have an offer

annoners (guest) 15 Feb 2012 04:53

I am interviewing in a few days at a top choice department, in which i feel that my research fits really well. i also have an offer in hand. how do i bring this up with the search chair. Do i do it at the interview, beforehand, or do i wait until the interview is over? what is the most political way to do this?

thx!

awesome (guest) 15 Feb 2012 05:26

I brought it up explicitly. They need to know and it makes you more attractive to them, and they will take it into consideration when deciding who to offer the position through first. I emailed the search chair something like:

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to interview at XXX. I was wondering if you would be willing to give me a general sense of the job search timeline at XXX university? I completely understand if you are not able to share this information.The reason I ask is that I currently have an offer for a faculty position. In many ways, however, a position at YYY university position is a much better fit for what I am looking before as a faculty member because of W,A,Z.

You could email it after the search if it doesn't come up in the interview (some people might explicitly ask you if you have other offers)

congrats (guest) 15 Feb 2012 13:28

Congrats on receiving an offer and another interview!

I agree with "awesome" that it is good to bring it up. I also agree that it is important to clearly state your preference. Having another offer could make people at this second school feel that offering a position to you is risky. You might take the first offer after waiting several weeks and they could lose their other candidates in the meantime. So it is important to be clear that your preference is the second school. At the same time, it is understandable if you might take the first offer if an offer at this second school doesn't come through in time (a bird in the hand…). If you feel that way, it is also worth explaining, as it could speed up the process if they really want you. Sometimes, though, their hands are tied. Even if they know they want you, they may not be able to offer you a position until they have finished interviewing all of their candidates. This is something that happened to me - the other school told me I was their first pick, but a deadline at job 1 approached before they could offer me a position because they had to wait until they interviewed all candidates.

cog (guest) 15 Feb 2012 18:46

I agree with the above. It is to your advantage to tell the school about your other offer, but at the same time make sure that you do so in a way that doesn't scare off the second school. Tell the second school that they are your preferred choice, even if you are not 100% sure of that (and how can you be sure until you've seen the actual offers in writing, anyway?) For the most part, giving them this information will make you look more desirable.

If you have already interviewed at school 2 and you get an offer from school 1 in the meantime, then definitely let school 2 know immediately of the offer at 1, even if you're not sure it is your preferred choice. In a tiebreaker situation at school 2, you might get the offer over another candidate because they might be worried about losing you to the other school (i.e. they can fall back on the other candidate that they liked if you don't take their offer.)

Re: how to tell the interviewing department that you have an offer

Eh_non 18 Feb 2012 15:18

I was in a similar situation a few weeks ago. I waited until the end of the interview at school #2 to bring it up. I felt that school #2 was a perfect fit by the end of the interview. I *hoped* that the SC would have a sense of whether they wanted to offer me the position before introducing any potential bias of having another offer (e.g., potential risk, etc., as raised by other folks here).

I emphasized that I felt like school #2 was a wonderful fit for me, but I have another offer on the table. It worked out well - the provost called a few days after the interview with an offer (even with another candidate interviews in those days) and it also gave me leverage during negotiation. So, I agree with the posts above, but I waited until the end of the interview as a more cautious approach. I also still had another 1.5-2 weeks to make a decision for school #1, so I had some flexibility with the timeline.