Moving from one faculty position to another

Getting a job the last year of your Ph.D. program is a fairly straight-forward process. You send out packets to schools in early January and wait for calls inviting you to fly out for interviews. At interviews you meet with faculty, present your job-market paper (almost always a paper based on your dissertation), and learn about the school and the local area. If all goes well, at least one of the schools you fly out to will offer you a tenure-track faculty position. Where things get difficult is when you want to (or have to) leave a faculty position at one school to take a position at another school (commonly referred to as "non-rookie recruiting").

The most common reason for leaving a school is that you have to. Tenure clocks at research schools run from 6-10 years. Near the end of that clock you either know you won't get tenure and need to leave or you formally "go up" for tenure, a process that can take almost a year. If you get tenure there is no problem. If you get turned down, you generally have another academic year to find a new position. In addition to leaving because you are at the end of a contract, you may want to move because: you don't enjoy the school and/or your colleagues; you don't enjoy the area you live; you want to be closer to family; you want to work with particular colleagues at another school; or another school recruits you away with a good job offer.