New York universities collaborate to address challenges of dual hires

The needs of dual-career academic couples are playing a greater role in college faculty recruitment and universities have made concerted efforts to respond to job seeker demands.

It's common, approaching the point of expected, for universities to offer programs and services for dual-career academic couples as early on in the hiring process as they can. In upstate New York, Rochester Institute of Technology, Syracuse, Binghamton, Cornell, the University of Buffalo and the University of Rochester — to name a few — each have webpages, and often offices, dedicated to just that.  

But the efforts extend beyond the individual university, and through the establishment of collaborative organizations like the Higher Education Recruitment Consortium, institutions are working together to address the needs of their potential hires.

There are currently 18 regional HERCs across the country composed of more than 700 member institutions. The Upstate New York HERC is made up of 25.

Elizabeth Ancarana, Harvard's assistant provost for faculty development and diversity, is a member of HERC's national board, and one of the New England HERC’s founding members. 

According to Ancarana, who works closely with dual-career academic couples during Harvard faculty searches, HERCs are an incredibly valuable resource for those looking for academic jobs within a centralized forum.

Prior to the establishment of HERCs, there was no centralized and accessible online location where positions within higher education could be shared across institutions. Because of this, dual-career academic couples were often limited to applying to open positions within the institution where one partner had already applied, making the probability of placement significantly lower. 

Now, institutions network among themselves, sharing job opportunities and drastically increasing accessibility to the pool from which partners — or job seekers, as Ancarana refers to them — are able to apply. Then, Ancarana comes in and acts as a broker.

"Before HERC, I would have to run cold Google searches to uncover open positions at other universities, and it was like finding a needle in a haystack," she said. "Once we established this central online portal, all of a sudden we had a job bank populated with thousands of jobs that made it easier for myself and the job seekers to work proactively together to find positions that matched their criteria. Then I can do the work reaching out and contacting chairs within Harvard or other institutions to introduce our job seeker and help them open doors."

Ancarana went on to say that cultural shifts over the past several decades have complicated the needs of dual-career couples, too. 

"If you were made an offer by Harvard 30, 40, 50 years ago, typically you would just come. Now, the vast majority of couples both work out of the home and develop professionally, so it's a tradeoff," she said. "Because this work is so difficult and complex, you will always have offers that don't work for the family. That said, with HERC in place, we have the ability to be more successful because we've developed relationships that we never had 10 years ago."

Ancarana recalled one particular situation during which Harvard was working to recruit a tenure track faculty member who was based in Europe with his family. He was part of a dual-career academic partnership, and his wife was seeking an academic teaching position in a business field. Through HERC, she was able to identify 10 different positions in the area that she could apply for.

"She had two interviews before she even left Europe," said Ancarana, who added that the woman went on to accept a position at a business school in the region. "Before HERC, the work I would have had to do to uncover those jobs was immense and inefficient. Now we can focus on building connections and networking instead of simply searching for jobs."

Collaborative model being replicated

But collaboration among institutions to meet the growing demands of dual-career couples isn't specific to academia, and economic development organizations such as Tech Valley Connect apply a similar model to professional hiring. 

The consortium, which works with employers in a designated region to provide resources for new hires and dual-career couples both within and outside academia, began at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, Rensselaer County, in 2008 as a pilot program working under a National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant. In 2010, the program transitioned from a pilot to an independent nonprofit and has continued to grow from there.

Now, the program is being replicated in regions around the country.

Angela McNerney, the program's founder, said that 72 percent of research faculty have a spouse that works outside the home. Of the 72 percent, about half of the spouses work in academia.

"We wanted to include other industry factors because dual careers were impacting anybody who relocated," said McNerney. "When you relocate, you lose your network, and what we wanted to do was see if we could accelerate the time it took for a spouse to grow a network and find work. After about five years, we found that we were helping spouses find jobs at a rate of 39 percent higher than before."

McNerney said that there was a 92 percent retention rate among all hires that were referred.

"The conversations that couples have about relocating happen in the kitchen," said McNerney. "This is about couples saying 'Look, I know that this is a great opportunity for you, but I'm just not going to find what I need there,' We are trying to help them in the process."

McNerney said that over time she has noticed a shift in which partner is leading the relocation. According to McNerney, while men still make up the higher percentage of first hires in heterosexual couples, the gap has gotten smaller over the years, with more men trailing their spouse than ever before.

Still, a few factors play into the uneven distribution.

"In heterosexual couples, men tend to be three or four years older than their female partners. That means that they're that much more established in their careers, and making that much more money," she said. "People follow the money."

@LaurenMPeace