Advanced assistant/early associate jobs

[anonymous human]

Why are some hires for advanced assistants or early associates? I mean, why do departments sometimes want to hire such a person?

I know of one such position that appears to be a replacement. Is that the most common reason, or not? Also, I'm applying for a couple positions, though I am most certainly not in that category. Will my application get tossed without consideration?

[anotheranonhuman]

Departments usually want to do this so they can bring in already proven scholars, who have a strong research record, who had tenure - or who they know will easily get tenure soon. This means they can more quickly work with graduate students, contribute to committees, boost the reputation of the department, etc.

My dept. is hiring an advanced asst/associate this year - and they did cut all ABD's or people 1-2 years out in the first round.

[cost]

This is one of those questions that is, in part, answered by embracing your inner economist. Departments have an interest when they make a hire of being certain that that person is going to succeed in obtaining tenure. There are a lot of costs associated with any hire (time, financial and otherwise - the search process, start-up, etc.); and they'd prefer those not go wasted. Many assistant professor hiring decisions regarding candidates coming straight out of grad school are being made on potential as much as, if not more so than, on established track record. As such, it's frequently a decision making process fraught with a lot of imperfect information (about the likelihood of a successful tenure case). Thus, if a department can let those with promise sort out how likely they are to translate that promise into actual productivity elsewhere (i.e., on someone else's dime), then the likelihood of their making a "wrong" decision are substantially reduced. So, if departments have the resources (typically either financial or in reputation) to be able to lure these folks away at that stage, they do it. You might wonder why they wouldn't just make an Associate hire then? Well, it's always nice to have some possibility of changing your mind, just in case.

Obviously there are other factors involved as well, but given the structure of the market over the past few years, this accounts for at least a few places explicitly turning to this approach of late.

[poaching]

Departments also use it as a way of poaching under placed people.

For all kinds of reasons some folks end up at departments below their market value. For example, the recent job market has meant that many really good people took jobs below where they could have landed. Also sometimes people don't make a big splash immediately when graduating but within a few years have really done well for themselves. Other times they were on a department's radar for a while but they may have been seen as a risky bet before.

The main reason is that departments do this because they can. There is a glut of talent and it is a buyer's market. Good departments can afford to let lower ranked places make the initial risk investment and then swoop in and hire the successful ones away after a few years.

[anonymous human]

Thanks for the thoughts. I applied to two. One indicates that the "preferred" career stage is adv. assist./early associate. I was encouraged to apply by someone who doesn't think they'll get many applications from folks at that stage. The other is kind of the same way. Interestingly, it asks for someone at that stage, but then says the Ph.D. has to be completed by August 2012. So, I applied.

Just hoping my application doesn't get tossed without a look.

[lifer]

When my dept put out an ad like that a year or two ago, I had a few long conversations with a few people who were on the committee, and they said that everybody got a look. They really did at least look at the CV, fairly closely, of every single person who applied, even though they knew they really wanted an associate. That said, only 1of the dozen or so candidates who made it into the conversation at the meeting table was ABD.