My husband and I recently found a long-term solution to our two-body problem after seven years of hopscotching through job seasons. When we entered into the job season last year with the goal of permanence in mind, I asked many faculty people for advice on how to approach the job search as a couple. The advice was all over the place. From this experience, I gleaned that there is no established protocol for solving the two-body problem; each couple's set of circumstances makes each search and solution look a little different. And actually, this is one of the lessons I would like to impart to you — there is no one, straightforward, established path to a two-body solution.
My husband and I recently found a long-term solution to our two-body problem after seven years of hopscotching through job seasons. When we entered into the job season last year with the goal of permanence in mind, I asked many faculty people for advice on how to approach the job search as a couple. The advice was all over the place. From this experience, I gleaned that there is no established protocol for solving the two-body problem; each couple's set of circumstances makes each search and solution look a little different. And actually, this is one of the lessons I would like to impart to you — there is no one, straightforward, established path to a two-body solution.
Nevertheless, there were a few bits of advice that we found extremely useful and appeared to be pretty generally applicable, and there were some things we learned along the way. The focus of this advice is on academic solutions at the faculty/staff level. However, a lot of this advice is applicable at a postdoc level, or at the faculty level even if you are looking for only one job, not two!
