Are Exploding Offers So Bad?
posted by Dan Filler
Jennifer Mnookin, at Law and Culture, has a good post about the use of exploding offers in law faculty recruiting. I agree with her fundamental points, that such offers a) aren’t very nice (though I’d take issue with her term,”outrageous”); and b) are potentially counter-productive, insofar as they may lead a candidate to accept the exploding offer but leave the school prematurely due to bad feelings.
But here’s the thing. Recruiting – professors, law clerks, engineers – is a competitive business. Despite the overall size of a given year’s hiring pool, law schools are competing over a relatively small number of canidates. And it turns out teaching candidates focus on relatively consistent features in developing their job preferences. The first and most obvious is school prestige, and the related benefits of faculty and student quality. Another important recruiting advantage, as I have suggested, is location. So what are the rest of the hoi polloi, those lower ranked or off-the-beaten-track schools, to do?
Exploding offers, though unpleasant from the candidate’s viewpoint, are a strong recruiting tool. First off, as one of Jennifer’s commenters suggests, they sometimes work. There is a risk that the recruiting school will unnecessarily lose its favored candidate, but if the hiring committee is making sharp assessments, its targets will frequently receive competing offers from more attractive schools. In such cases, an exploding offer may be the only route to an acceptance. And when a candidate does say no, the short deadline allows the school to quickly pursue backup candidates. On balance, particularly where a school has a strong second choice candidate, I suspect that exploding offers yield better faculty hires.
And what about the lingering bad feelings? Two things. First, I’m not sure that all candidates facing an exploding offer experience this. In order to feel mistreated, a candidate has to believe she has some sort of entitlement to the better job. I can’t speak for those folks in play at the most elite schools, but few of the candidates I’ve seen – even those we lose to other schools – have the self-confidence (may I even suggest ego?) to feel entitled to a chance at the “better” job. opportunity to the “better” school. Second, even if a candidate does feel anger at her new employer, in many cases she will have little long-term recourse (other than leaving the field.) Many excellent entry-level candidates don’t turn out to be nearly as insightful or productive as expected. And while there is some lateral mobility in law teaching, it is surprisingly limited.
I personally believe that good treatment of candidates produces positive karma – for the school and for individual relationships. But since you can’t cash karma at the end of the month (or mail out a karma glossy during US News ranking season), I’m sympathetic to those deans who disagree with me.
January 24, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Responses (2)
Etaoin Shrdlu - January 25, 2006 at 9:07 am
I agree with Dan’s sense of the pragmatics here. Another variant, which I don’t think Mnookin mentions, is a “first come, first served” approach. For example, a school that wants to hire one new professor, and that finds more than one of the prospects suitable, can offer the job to all the prospects with the clear information that whoever accepts the job first gets it. (This seems, to me at least, to be less harsh than an offer that expires quickly on a date certain.)
PrawfsBlawg - January 26, 2006 at 3:31 am
Law teaching and exploding offers
Jennifer Mnookin over at LawCulture has a great post concerning exploding offers on the teaching market. She writes:I get the feeling that exploding offers just might be increasing, and sometimes with deadlines that seem ever-earlier.Our readership inc…
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