As I mentioned previously, a problem for Chinese faculties is lack of marketing. As a result, these faculties, even those who are doing very well in their fields, stay in the same institution for a long time, if not life time. It is not necessarily bad to stay in the same place, as long as you are happy. However, I don't think that you will find everything goes the way you want in a place. For example, you are doing well by getting a lot of grants. As a consequence, you will need more space; you will need less teaching load et al. However, when you bring these issues to your Chair, he or she may not have resources for you, either he or she does not really have them or he or she has other priorities. Now you suffer from your success! I also find that many faculties, who stay in one place for too long, do not really know what their values are. In a broad sense, they also suffer in a different way. We all want to do better in what we chose to do. Sometimes, these issues could bring you uncomfortable feeling or even anger. All these problems, however, could be easily solved by simply showing your market value.
There are various ways to market yourself. When you become reasonably well-known in your area, you will be invited to give talks, including speeches in meetings, seminars or lectures in extramural institutions. This is an excellent opportunity for marketing yourself. I find that the invitations to give seminars in other schools are the best opportunities because you can have one-to-one opportunity to talk with your colleagues. In addition to knowing their sciences, you will also know them as a person. When you are doing well, you will also need to be open-mined to collaborate with others. You will make a lot of friends by doing this, share the joys of discovery, and they will obviously remember you. In these occasions, you can openly discuss with your colleagues your problems, your space issue, your teaching load, even your anger on your chair, et al. In my own experience, this is the best way to let others knowing you and deliver a message “I am available” rather than looking for advertisement in the back of Nature or Science and sending your letters. If you seriously consider leaving, you can discuss with your colleagues about how bad your chair is, how stressful you are in current place, how bad the weather is in your city, how much your wife or husband dislike the environment et al. Remember, we are all humans and you and your colleagues have a lot experiences to share, either good or bad. I have found that human beings, does not matter where they come from, share amazing similarities in interests, especially those in similar age.
This is also the best time to know the place you visit. They will obviously tell you all about their campuses, systems, people et al. I like to emphasize here that you should not discriminate your colleagues based on their locations (famous vs. infamous places), achievement, et al. Remember, people changes all the time, just like you. I got to know a colleague when I visited him in the University of Texas at Houston and started to know more of him later due to a small collaborative project. The project did not go anywhere and communication stopped too. A couple years later, he took a Chair job at Yale and offered me a position in the first week of his arrival! I did make a trip but thing did not work out eventually. Nevertheless, Now you will have the first hand inxxxxation about other universities, their locations, their problems, good and bad things et al. These are much more real and valuable inxxxxation than those you can see from a book!
Everybody has their preferences for a job and life. You may want a good scientific environment, better salary, specific equipments you can access, good weather, fun for kids et al. How do you know a place you will be happy and fit? You will need to do your ground work. When you get invited to give a talk, you are paid to do your groundwork! What a great thing! Remember, a suitable place for you is relative. There is always something you like and dislike in a given place. The key is to find a place you are happy with most of things. Such a place could only be found by comparison among different places. I heard many Chinese faculties told me that they are too busy on science, when they decided to leave; they interviewed many places and it made them tired. Well, I can see you do have problems. You did not do your ground work well. If you did your groundwork, when you decide to leave, you may get a couple of offers but you will only focus on very few places to interview because you already know that you don’t want to go some places during your groundwork. In my own experience, when you get invitation for a job interview, you will be much better off if you do have a colleague you know reasonably well. He or she will tell you a lot of sensitive issues which others will not tell you. For example, you don’t know how to tell your Chairman how much salary you deserve because you don’t know salary structure in that place. The person you know in that university will tell you that. As you all probably know, when you stay in a place for long enough, you will know your colleagues’ salary figures through different ways, such as writing grant together, gossips among secretaries et al. In a best situation, you don’t even have to bargain your salary, your friend will do it for you and this will avoid some potentially embarrassing situation and there will not anger involved.
Let’s say that now you are very happy with your job and you think that this is the best job in the world for you. However, you may have some issues coming up during your job. You will need some extra twists from your department chair. If you are showing that you are on the market with a good value, he or she may create resources for or turn priority to you. As a Chairman, he or she will need to think this way: If I don’t give this guy these things, the risk is that I will lose this person. Should I take this risk? See, you get the priority in their mind already. Of course, thing you are asking has to be reasonable and you also want to also make sure that he or she could handle your request. In fact, if you ask a very unreasonable deal, you give Chairman a clear signal that you are leaving.
Regarding recommendation letters, that is a small issue. In many cases, you don’t need recommendation letters to do all these I have said. If you have colleagues working for you, you can get a job offer in oral or in written xxxx without any recommendation letters (I did!). You will need recommendation letters only the promotion committee is going to officially appoint you. In this case, you are guaranteed by your colleagues. You will be amazed how the system works with a trust on you. For negotiation of a good deal with your Chair when you don’t want to leave, an oral offer is more than sufficient.
I apologize for such long message and I don’t have time to polish my essay but I hope you will find something useful.
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Comments
1) Treat your university/department as your own bussiness
2) doubly pay back what you get
3) maintain the highest degree of integrity and honesty
4) maintian positive attitudes and avoid negative people
5) always consider what other want and how you can meet their wants creatively
6) Move from independence to interdependnce
7) Be a light, not a judge; be a model, not a critic; be part of a solution, not part of a problem.
Also
4) maintian positive attitudes and be friendly with negative people
or at least treat them with your smile.
5) develop interdependence but maintain your independence.
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