Up until the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to hear some version of “over my dead body!” when proposing the hiring of a faculty couple. It was symptomatic of a strong feeling among many academics and administrators that “partner” (or at the time “spousal”) accommodation was risky, unfair, and presented more downsides than opportunities. Job candidates, for their part, sweated over whether to mention their husband, wife, or partner in their application materials and interviews.
In this series David D. Perlmutter writes about pursuing a career in academic administration and about surviving and thriving as a leader – whether you are a chair a dean a provost and or any of the positions in between and beyond.
Since then, the hiring rules, academic mores, and institutional priorities have changed radically. Plenty of institutions now trumpet their commitment to partner hiring up front. And administrators spend a considerable amount of time trying to make these complex double hires happen.
But that doesn’t mean all of the prejudices, suspicions, and concerns have faded away. In some cases, smoldering resistance to partner hires still affects how a department votes and how willing candidates are to be frank about their true needs.
Here in the Admin 101 column, I often emphasize the cultural and interpersonal aspects of campus leadership. To paraphrase a character from the Yellowstone TV show, a leader has to manage the ranch, not just work it. So part of your role as an administrator supervising faculty hiring is not just to do the technical planning — the subject of my first essay in this series on partner hiring — but also to wrangle the human and cultural elements. Part 2 of this series focuses on executing the academic-couple hire and anticipating potential blowback.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss the opposition. When you encounter resistance to a partner hire, your first step in dealing with the opposition is to acknowledge that it is not groundless. The following true examples illustrate the kind of blow-ups and buyer’s remorse that may cause departments and individual faculty members to feel wary of hiring future “twofers.”
- In order to recruit a promising colleague, a language department at a small liberal-arts college agreed to also hire her spouse, who was in the same field. The first turned out to be as terrific as anticipated, but her partner was a terrible teacher, drove away students, and showed little interest in improving.
- In hiring a major grant-winning senior professor, a science department at a top research university also agreed to hire his younger, tenure-track partner in a different field. She turned out to be a very good scholar, but her new department never really wanted her and felt that she had been imposed upon them by the administration. She grew miserable and, as a result, both of them left a few years later, resulting in a loss of time and start-up cost for the university and wasted years for the couple — a lose-lose situation.
- An arts department at a regional university hired a married couple who — while technically excellent at both teaching and research — were terrible colleagues. They ganged up to bully anyone who opposed them on any issue, major or minor. They also exited a few years later, to everyone’s rejoicing, but left in their wake lingering bitterness against partner hiring.
Such recruiting disasters still happen, and no amount of good intentions will make them go away. But in managing this process, you can take steps to soften some of the opposition and head off trouble at the pass.
Run a real hiring process for the partner, not an appointment by fiat. The more a hiring accommodation becomes a back-door deal — bypassing standard governance protocols, HR norms, and screening criteria — the less popular and justified it will be. Forcing a partner on a department does no long-term favor to the scholar or to the unit’s morale.
At my university, we treat an academic partner as an “opportunity hire.” For example, in the college where I am dean, the partner is an actual job candidate and goes through every step required of every other candidate for that rank or position. If, for example, the finalists for a tenure-track position must give a teaching demo, deliver a research presentation, and participate in an open faculty forum, then so will the opportunity hire. Everything about the hire is routine with one exception: There are no other candidates — the choice is either Yes or No, but it is a real choice and No could be the answer.
The key point here is that it’s possible for the appointment to fail. As we like to say in our college, “You have to ace the interview, no matter who you are.” Our faculty members and administrators are aware that a candidate’s partner can be rejected if that person makes a poor showing during the interview process or doesn’t seem likely to succeed on the job. The risk is real, but the process is fairer.
Make sure the potential match between partner and department makes sense. The fit may be off for any number of reasons. Perhaps the internal opposition to the partner hire is already too strong, and nobody is going to give the candidate a reasonable hearing. Or maybe even a friendly scan of the partner’s CV shows little promise of a match to the job description.
Some administrators, eager to hire one member of an academic couple, try to force a square peg into a round hole. A good example: The chair of a mathematics department at a community college described interviewing a candidate, as part of dual hire, who had a degree in a science field but not one in math. That was quasi-acceptable to the math department’s faculty but, during the interview process, it became clear that the candidate had feeble mastery of the kind of math skills any hire would have to teach. The chair questioned why administrators had thought it would be a sound pairing in the first place.
An essential part of your management of a partner hire, then, is to be a careful matchmaker. Really spend time with the partner, review the person’s work, and consult colleagues in the potential hiring department and in the adjacent ones. You are not just looking for disciplinary key words. In many universities, for example, there are half a dozen departments that hire biologists. A partner candidate who studies cellular respiration and photosynthesis might end up happier and a better fit for the forestry department than with the biological-sciences department.
Don’t try to run the interview process yourself. Academe is full of independent-minded, self-directed people who are naturally suspicious — often with reason when an administrator tries to impose (or is even perceived as imposing) a mandate or a faculty hire upon them. That’s why you as the chair or dean overseeing the hiring of an academic couple should find someone else to handle the candidate’s interview.
Work with the head of the hiring department to pick a senior faculty member to lead the interview process. It should be someone of stature who is trusted by multiple constituencies and has a reputation for both efficiency and responsibility.
To be clear, you are not dumping your work on this senior professor. As a department chair or dean working with staff members and other administrators, you will sweat the logistics, filings, negotiations, and approvals of the process. But since your goal is a normal hiring sequence (even if the partner is the only candidate being considered for the position), then it makes sense that the head of the “evaluation committee” should not be you.
Of course that carries a risk of no hire at all. But real governance has no guarantees. Follow its path, wherever it leads, since that will result in the best outcome for the institution, the departments, and the couple.
Downplay the “partner” label; play up the “opportunity.” As the hiring process proceeds, don’t let the “partner” label impede real fairness and equity. When I announce an opportunity hire, I don’t reference the circumstances in any official correspondence. In my mind, it’s irrelevant to the decision we have to make. In the end, should it matter whose partner this is or even that the partner is a partner? Sure that circumstance set off the chain of events, but once the interviews and evaluations begin, our choice should be focused solely on the candidate’s suitability for the position.
Yet don’t cover it up, either. If I’m asked how an opportunity hire arose or how it’s being paid for, I respond frankly. If skeptics want to make an issue out of it, that is their right. Likewise, if they guess that a new hire is part of an academic couple, that’s fine. It is not a state secret, but neither should it be a Tweet. Each partner should be judged independently.
You will need both members of the couple to cooperate on this front. Neither of them should be marshaling their allies or pressuring their opponents. A language professor at an Ivy League university told me that a colleague of his successfully sabotaged his own partner’s hiring by loudly and repeatedly lobbying for it with other faculty members. The latter responded with irritation and, finally, pushback. They eventually voted against hiring that professor’s partner. Both members of an academic couple need to be briefed on the importance of playing it straight and cool. The double hire will happen on its own merits — or not.
In the end, the best argument for partner accommodation is practical: We can’t expect to hire the best people while ignoring their life circumstances. You can assuage fears and anticipate concerns about these hires by replicating the normal search process as much as possible. The rewards — thriving faculty members and departments — are worth the gamble.
Next in this series: a look at the details and peculiarities of the hiring contracts and onboarding process of partner hires.
