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4. Relocation Services
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Jack and Cindy have been married for ten years and have two children aged seven and five. Jack has a Ph.D. in physics and recently accepted a position as an assistant professor at Riverdale University. Although he had three offers, he and his wife liked Riverdale and the small city where it is located. It will be a good place to raise their children. Jack’s wife has a master’s degree in public relations and has been working at a firm in the area where the couple currently lives. Cindy definitely wants to continue working, preferably in public relations. During the interview Jack was hesitant to press too hard about the need for his wife to find a suitable job, but he was told about the relocation office during his on-campus interview and given a packet of information about the program. When he was offered the position, Jack told the chair that he very much wanted to accept but that his decision would ultimately depend on whether Cindy could find appropriate work. The department chair said he could not promise anything , but he assured Jack that he would have the relocation specialist call them immediately. Shari, the director of relocation services, called the very next day and chatted with Cindy. She had Cindy send her résumé and told her about the office’s Web site, which provided detailed information about the city, businesses , and a host of other services such as schools and churches. As Jack and the chair negotiated start-up costs, salary, and such, Cindy and Shari worked on finding Cindy a job. Whenever Cindy applied for a position, Shari would write a letter of introduction to accompany her résumé and cover letter. When the time came for Jack to give an oral commitment, Cindy still hadn’t had a definite offer, but Shari had put her in touch with several local firms and had sent her résumé to the public relations office on campus as well as to the sports information office . Jack and Cindy felt encouraged by the assistance Riverdale offered. Neither of the other two universities where Jack interviewed had even mentioned relocation services, although the department chair at each university was willing to send Cindy’s résumé out to local companies and to give them some names to contact. So they accepted the position at Riverdale and moved to Riverdale City. Cindy continued to work with Shari, and in January she was offered a position at 4 Relocation Services 52 a local firm. In the meantime, Shari had helped them locate a neighborhood to live in, choose physicians, and even find a church. Jack and Cindy, a fictitious composite of couples we met, were offered and took advantage of the formal relocation services provided by Riverdale University . Such services help both the initial hire and the family by offering a range of services to introduce newcomers to the community and to help them find everything from hairdressers to doctors to jobs. In the words of one relocation specialist, “The ultimate objective of spousal career assistance is to help the transferring spouse transition to a new career opportunity. The emphasis is not on the provider giving or finding the client a job; rather it is on providing spouses with the information, guidance and resources to facilitate their self-achievement of this goal.” In this chapter we describe relocation services as typically found in other employment sectors such as business, the military, and the foreign service; discuss approaches typically found in higher education; and then focus on two examples from our case study sites— Heartland University and Riverdale University—to show in more detail how relocation services work at these institutions and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to assisting dual-career couples. Relocation services are fairly common in the for-profit sector, where it is estimated that thousands of families move every year. Recent figures show that 65 percent of people in the workforce are in dual-career relationships (Uhland 1999). According to Eby and Allen (1998), the cost of relocating to a new city has been estimated at about $45,000 per homeowning family. In addition to the financial costs of moving, most companies recognize the human costs and offer some sort of assistance to help employees and their families cope with the social and psychological stresses of moving (Eby and Allen 1998). Many families find that their standard of living decreases after a move (Uhland...