To admit or ignore: the conundrum of an academic couple on the market

For those of you following my little blog, you know that General Disarray and I have been contemplating hitting the market this fall. We're pretty picky about where we would go (afterall, no point jumping to an equivalent or worse situation) and finally a couple of jobs have opened up which have caught our attention. Two of these are of the generic "looking for anyone in the fields of ecology and evolution" type. So we're both applying for some of the same jobs. (Having served on two search committees of the 'someone who works on pink spotted (but not red spotted) people-eaters who only eat tall people (but not short people) coming out of Wendy's on Sundays' searches, I cannot imagine how one evaluates that many job packets from so many sub-disciplines. General Disarray and I have joked that they must just weigh each CV for their first cut through the applicant pool...but of course nowadays it's all electronic so maybe it's a byte count...anyway I seriously digress).

So, we dutifully emailed our letter writers, pinky swearing them to secrecy (seems funny to swear them to secrecy and then blog about it, but I guess that's why I'm (hopefully) anonymous). More than one of my letter writers asked if it was okay to mention General Disarray in their letter. I have to admit I was more than a little bafoozled by the question. The argument coming from my letter writers was that they thought it would not hurt, but would help our applications and since we would not leave our current university without jobs for both of us, there was no reason not to be upfront about this. I had to admit that the logic seemed reasonable. Afterall, no point wasting everybody's time and effort if there is no way a department can come up with a second job, right? And, letting them know at the outset would give them maximum time to secure a second job if they wanted, right? Except....have you all seen the Incredibles? There's a scene where Mr Incredible wants a cape for his new superhero suit and Edna (the eccentric superhero fashion designer) says "No cape!" and begins listing all the superheros done in by their cape.

Figure 1. Mr Incredible, Edna, and the 'Hobo Suit'

Well, like Edna, I can list very good academic couples that appeared to suffer on the job market from honesty. Some of these people were frankly superstars, who if on the market independently would have secured interviews at a majority of schools, yet surprisingly received 1 or no interview requests when the fact that they would need a job for their spouse was either in their cover letter or in their letters of recommendation. I suspect that when deciding who to interview, there is overt or subconscious bias against people who have admitted openly they need a second job for their spouse. To really test this, General Disarray and I would randomly choose half of our applications to be sent with cover letters admitting we were an academic couple and half where we did not and see if there was a statistical difference in interview rates....but I strongly suspect that we will not have a large enough sample size to make it meaningful.

On the flip side, I also suspect that General Disarray and I may be outted anyway since we will be opposite gendered people applying from the same university. Furthermore, we know people at these universities, and we know that they know about us. I have no clue how a committee would respond if they knew we were married but we hadn't brought it up. Would the search committee wonder if we thought they were stupid or assume we were getting a divorce?

Anyway, I am opening this question to you, dear readers. I'm working on my job packet this week, so there's plenty of time to incorporate your suggestions! Do we admit up front in our job applications that we're looking for two positions or deal with it if we manage to get an interview/offer?

Department Heads: Friends or Foes?

As part of an academic couple, I have invested a lot of time gathering stories and advice on how to solve the "two-body" problem (i.e. how to get two tenure-track jobs at the same institution - or at least the same metropolitan area). The stories are almost always the same: if one spouse has a job and the other does not, the university will not come up with a second job unless an offer from another university is obtained. It is almost like it's written in stone on some University Tablet of Commandments: Thou shalt not make a spousal accommodation unless another institution makes an offer first. I know of only two exceptions to the golden rule: 1) a second job may be thrown into initial job negotiations, 2) a university knows they cannot afford to match offers from richer schools and acts proactively. I have heard of multiple incidences of exception number one. I have only heard of one incidence of exception number 2.

I have a friend, let's call her Prof X. Prof X has a tenure-track position and is married to Dr. Y. Dr. Y does not have a tenure track position and is coming to the end of his postdoctoral funding. For the past couple of years I have been telling Prof X that if she wanted to shake loose a second job, she needed to hit the market ASAP, but she has been reluctant to do so. I never delved into why, but I think part of our difference in perspective results from her landing her job on her first application and interview, whereas I went through a 3-year grueling ordeal that still causes me to break out in dry heaves when I think about applying for jobs. Hence, we have very different perspectives on the job market. Whatever the cause, she and her husband put off applying for jobs until this past fall. They did well on the job market, getting several interviews and one job offer.

Here's the part that links with my question today regarding department heads. Her department head, as per the secret University Commandments referenced above, suddenly came up with the money to offer him a tenure-track position. Dr Y would have to undergo an in-house "interview" process, but this was primarily to be a formality. Prof X turned down the job offer from the other university before the position for Dr. Y was finalized. For whatever reason, (I do not know the details), it now looks like the department head is waffling on his decision and it appears the position for Dr. Y is in some jeopardy. The reason could be innocent, (i.e., budget problems, which are plaguing many states, may make coming up with the money harder), but I have some reason to suspect something more nefarious (though I do admit I have a penchant for conspiracy theories). I suspect that Dr.Y may have some enemies in the department, resulting in some loud voices arguing against his pending position. Furthermore, that a department head might rescind an offer once a competing offer is no longer looming is not out of line with the various horror stories I have heard.

Since I am sure others have had Department Heads go back on their word, let's assume for a moment that Prof X's department head is supremely Machiavellian. This leads me to my current question: should a department head be considered a friend or a foe? I have always felt like a faculty member should be able to count on their department head to be their advocate with the higher administration. I have benefited from mine helping me to deal with a variety of issues that were interfering with my teaching and/or research (though only if it wasn't something he needed me to do for political reasons). However, the story of Prof X, and others like it, suggest that a Department Head should be viewed as a chess opponent not an advocate. As long as you have options on the board, everything is good but beware the Department Head checkmate. It can really suck.