I have no idea what to tell my current department head. They said they won't have an answer about who they're hiring for another two or three weeks.

Why do you have to tell him anything? He's not telling you anything useful.

I told him that I'd let him know by May 1 whether I was accepting the offer to stay or not.

Can you give a conditional yes? Is the other schools offering tenure track, and PS not? I can't imagine they would begrudge you for backing out for a better job, unless they want to match the offer.

Usually, I recommend doing a ton of networking before the resume is submitted such that it gets into the hands of someone who can shepherd the paper into the right hands.

Stupid networking. That's what always gets me!

Networking, it turns out, is hard when you don't know people outside of work for the most part. Or outside the intertubes.

Funny, though: I joined some netgroups where I knew people after the tech crash in hopes of doing some networking (failed, as no one else had a job, either), and as a result, found out where the Salon Buffy discussions had gone (World Crossing), and while I didn't get a job from it, hey! I got this place!

(I'm doing my annual "attempting to escape the mothership and getting nothing but autorejects back" thing.)

and while I didn't get a job from it, hey! I got this place!

I was explaining something post-CA2 and said, basically, "I have my people. And the Internet. Which are, oftentimes, made of the same things."

(I'm doing my annual "attempting to escape the mothership and getting nothing but autorejects back" thing.)

Agh. So frustrating.

Networking can be hard, for sure.

It's cool that you found this community that way though. What a beautiful tradeoff.

Hil, I don't your department or the people there, but this is what would happen in my university, which is more or less a twin of yours.

You would explain to the chair that you have been happy there and have been planning to stay, but that you had interviewed for another job with some attractive features and if they made you an offer in the next couple of weeks you would have a difficult decision to make. Depending on how much they value you, your chair would either say "Ok, tell me as soon as possible so I know whether I need to go to the trouble of finding someone else" or will ask you not to accept the other position until he/she can consider options that might help them to retain you.

If they really insist on an immediate decision (jerks!) I would tell them you are staying, because at the moment that is true. You have no other options. It is commonplace, for instance, that our lecturers will get a last minute offer for a visiting professor position at a smaller school that they think might turn into a tenure track line, and they have to back out of a contract with us. It doesn't upset anyone. They are our colleagues. We want them to get the career that they want. We try to find a way to make it worth their while to stay, but if they go we are happy for them.

Thanks, Rick.

I'm with Rick. My department is all NTT faculty, so we know that sometimes folks will sign a contract and then get a more attractive offer elsewhere.