Going on the market just after starting a job?

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

Two questions about job market etiquette:

1) Is it considered "rude," "in poor taste," or in violation of relevant norms to leave a job after only one year? One the one hand, I believe in employee freedom in a labor market; on the other, I get that people might be offended by this.

2) Is is a valid worry that your current employer might find out that you're on the market? I would hope that application materials are confidential, but I also imagine that philosophers, like the rest of humankind, like to gossip. Does anyone have experience of their employers retaliating in any sort of way after finding out they were applying out?

Good questions! Another reader submitted the following response:

I had a colleague who we hired leave after one year. I did not consider her rude ... I understood her motives quite well. But I am sure some of my colleagues absolutely hated her. We spent a lot of time doing the search, time we did not have. And then we choose her from among a number of fully qualified candidates - she deserved the job, but others were deserving as well. And then when she left we did not get the line renewed. It was lost ... for good! So do not expect your colleagues to be endeared to you if they find out you are on the market.

This sounds right to me, but here are my hot takes:

1. Sure, people will probably get upset if you leave after a year, as they hired you hoping and expecting you'd stay. But you have a right to leave for another job at any time (though if they asked during the hiring process whether you'd stay if hired and you were dishonest, then that seems bad, right?).
2. It's a worry for sure, but a "valid" one? I have no idea. I've never heard of employers finding out about this kind of stuff through the proverbial grape-vine, and think it would be an enormous wrong for anyone to compromise the confidentiality of a job application. Does it ever happen? I have no idea.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? It would be great to hear from people who have some experience with this kind of scenario, both on the job-candidate and hiring sides of things.

Comments

[Daniel A. Kaufman]

This all strikes me as fair, but then it is also fair for hiring committees to take flight risk into account when hiring.

[Bill Vanderburgh]

Hiring is a hassle, so departments want their efforts to bear fruits and produce long-term colleagues who earn tenure and make the department a delightful place to be. But mostly they just don't want to have to do more committee service. Like childbirth (so I hear), though, the memory of the badness of another committee fades, and in time they won't even think of you, let alone hold a grudge.

The serious potential negative for the candidate is if the department finds out you are trying to leave and you don't succeed--that could create some awkwardness. In some places it might (informally at least) jeopardize your tenure chances. But since you don't want to stay anyway, .

Not getting the line renewed is a bad thing that could happen to the department. As much as we might bemoan the loss of a ttrack position for the profession, that's their problem not yours. Anyway it is reasonably low probability: Presumably the conditions that made the dean agree to a hire a couple of years ago are pretty similar today (changes of leadership and economic downturns are the major spoilers of that pattern).

[corollary]

Not sure if this is worth another thread, but I think it's also worth mentioning that flight risks have to be proportional to the brutality of the market. In particular, the more candidates there are that take jobs they aren't thrilled with because they are "out of time" somewhere else (grad school/post docs), the more candidates there will be that are hoping to get somewhere else as soon as possible.

[Michel]

corollary: As another corollary, flight risk is going to be proportionate to the market for the AOS. If a department is really worried about it, they should hire in an AOS that advertises very few jobs each year. At 0-1 jobs a year, for example, no junior aesthetician, no matter how great, is much of a flight risk!

[T]

Beware that if you apply for a job in Norway, every candidate who applies will be sent a list of every candidate who applies.

[Joona Räsänen]

T: is that so? I have applied for jobs in Norway and never have I received such a list.

[T]

Yeah, it is. I have received one for each of the Norwegian jobs I've applied for and so have my friends who applied (I knew to ask them, since they were on the list).

[Peter]

Same in Sweden, you get an evaluation of yourself and all the other candidates, in my experience. So if you apply for jobs in these northern countries, other people on the market may know that you are looking for a new job.