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Tips/norms for solving a two-body problem?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am sure that this has been discussed here before, but what are the norms about going on the job market in order to solve a two-body problem? Do you raise that issue in a cover letter? In the interview process? After an offer? What do you say when people ask why you are looking for another job?

These are excellent questions. We actually have had a couple of threads on this before, but I think it's always helpful to receive more information and answers to these types of questions.

Anyone with any experience in these matters have any helpful tips? It would be great to hear both from people on the hiring side of things, as well as from candidates who were able to navigate a two-body problem successfully.

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6 responses to “Tips/norms for solving a two-body problem?”

  1. Dual-career veteran

    Raise it after the offer. No need to reveal it when asked; just give a bland response like “I like my current department, but I’m exploring new opportunities.”
    Sometimes during the interview there is an HR rep whose job it is to talk to you about partner hires stuff. Only talk to this person if they can assure you of confidentiality.
    It’s a good idea to research the university’s dual career policies ahead of time. Some places have good policies and procedures in place, some have inadequate policies, while others have no policy at all. Be very skeptical of temporary positions and vague promises of a permanent position in the future – they just kick the can down the road.

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  2. recently solved

    I think it’s important for both people to be very competitive for higher prestige jobs (R1 and elite universities) where spousal hire seems more common as a faculty recruitment/retention method.
    This might not sound helpful, but as an anecdote, my two-body problem was solved by one of us deciding to leave academia. Not at all a regretful decision, though.

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  3. Bill Vanderburgh

    I’ve seen many variations on this, including a couple in the same subfield who jointly applied for a single job with the intention of job-sharing. (It wasn’t disqualifying, but we ended up shortlisting other candidates. It would have been complicated if we had decided to pursue it, since it is not at all clear that our T&P policies could handle half-time T-track expectations, timelines, etc.)
    My general advice is that since the application is your best effort to convince someone to hire you, that’s not the place to mention your hope for a dual hire. That is a perk you desire, not a reason to hire.
    Another point is that hiring committees have nothing at all to do with the decision to not/hire a second person. That’s up to the dean/provost, which means it is a topic for negotiation after getting an offer.
    If there is some reason the hiring committee might doubt that you would accept the job if offered–like, if you are in a tenured role at a very prestigious place but are applying to a much less prestigious place in an untenured role–then it might be worth mentioning in the cover letter paragraph about why you want this job, “and my spouse works just down the road at X, so I’d be happy to be closer.”
    Our university has recently become more open to dual hires. They have realized that it is a way to get good candidates we would otherwise lose to better offers. Our dean, though, has seemed to be much less willing to make such make arrangements for people who are not legally married. I imagine that is a common attitude, even if it is unfair and doesn’t recognize the huge decline in marriage rates among people who are “permanently” together.

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  4. Rosa

    My rule of thumb was always “Do things in the way that makes it easiest for them to hire you.” For most of us, a spouse would make it harder to hire to us – because of chances we wouldn’t come if our spouse wasn’t offered a job, because of the chances that the hiring department might not think as highly of our spouse as us, because of the chances that the dean wouldn’t approve a hire for our spouse even if the department wanted them. So for most of us, tell them about the spouse after they are already invested in you – that is, at the offer stage. But as others have said, if you are very fancy and are applying to jobs that otherwise would think you wouldn’t come or would be a flight risk, then you might want to tell them in the cover letter – especially if the spouse issue doesn’t require them to find any additional resources (i.e. they are hiring for two jobs and your spouse is applying for the other one, or your spouse already works at a different university in the area).

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  5. Assistant Professor

    As others have said, wait until an offer is on the table to bring this up. Of people I have known who have had success at partner hiring, it hasn’t always been immediate, but in time if the hire is really good then the university is motivated to find a solution for their partner.
    That said, I recall speaking once with a chair of a department who was offended that a person didn’t bring up their partner until negotiating an offer as though somehow this person duped the department. But while this reaction suggests that requesting a partner hire might sour some of your colleagues toward you (temporarily), it is better than souring your chances of getting an offer (which it seems in this case would have been what happened had the partner hire request been known earlier on). In the end both people are TT and very successful, so I think it worked out for them and for the department.

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  6. Lucky

    I’m in a slightly different field within the academy, but I think my experience is relevant. My spouse and I are in different but overlapping sub-fields of the same discipline. We sort of solved our two-body problem by independently getting TT jobs about an hour apart (me a few years after my spouse, I was still in grad school when he was hired). My spouse was at a fancy R1, and I was at a struggling private college. It was OK for two years, but it made me a bit jealous to see up-close all the privileges and higher pay and lower teaching load and pre-tenure sabbatical my spouse had. Then I was laid off because of budget cuts. Things were going very well with my research though, and I had a lot of impressive stuff on my CV. Also my colleagues at my job were very bummed that I was cut and gave me super strong references.
    Many people in our field know we are married and probably assumed we were looking for new ways to solve our two body problem. I was very open about my layoff with my network and a colleague encouraged us both to apply for two positions at their university that weren’t previously on our radar for various reasons. But it turned out we were both just what they were looking for and we were each hired for the respective jobs. The search committees had a combined vision for how hiring both of us would strengthen their programs and they made it happen. We were extremely lucky that these positions were open at the right time and our jobs are both good fits at an R1. So, in my case networking and already knowing people in the department was helpful.

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