Finding Work
Once you have the qualifications and you know where you want to go, it’s time to find the job.
As you might expect, most vacancies open up just before the start of the new academic year. In most countries this is after Summer in September, but make sure to check when your destination starts its new year.
There are also more vacancies after Christmas in the early new year. This happens because some teachers decide that the school is not for them and go home for Christmas, never to return!
But apart from this, you may well be able to find decent job openings throughout the year if you keep a regular eye on things so regardless of when you are ready to go, start looking for work now and you’ll begin to get a good idea of what is available.
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Make Yourself Employable
The first step is to make yourself as employable as possible. This means:
- Getting some sort of qualification to show the school. If you turn up without a single piece of paper then it won't do you any good. At minimum you should have a TEFL Certificate to show that you have had some instruction and will know what you are doing in the classroom.
- If possible, get some kind of experience be it volunteering at a local immigrant centre or teaching one-to-one lessons with the children of a local family who have just moved to your country. Anything to put on your resume is better than nothing; and of course maximise it!
- It may sound very obvious, but you also need to look the part. Teachers are often highly regarded overseas and turning up at a school wearing grubby jeans and a t-shirt will not do you any good; think about what to wear when you turn up at a school.
Once you are ready, there are four main ways to find work.
Advertisements
Check out online advertisements. The first thing to do is make a quick search for your country of choice plus “efl job” and see what comes up. There are also a number of good websites advertising jobs and you should take a look at places like these regularly.
Go to these sites regularly and begin to make notes about what pay and conditions are like. You’ll start to build up a picture of what to expect in the country and this also helps to avoid scams.
If, for example, all the jobs you see offer around 2,000 per month and suddenly you see a similar job offering 8,000 per month this should set alarm bells ringing!
Agents
- See the main article, Agents.
Another tried and tested way to find work is through an agent. An agent acts as a go-between finding teachers to work in schools. An agent may, for example, advertise independently and find several hundred teachers to work in as many schools in China.
Agents can often be a good idea if you are a little unsure about moving overseas and would like someone who can answer all your questions and help you out if things go wrong. (Bear in mind, though, that they are employed by the schools so their first loyalty is to the school and not the teacher.)
By all means write to all the agents working in the country of your choice and see what their terms and conditions are.
However, there is one golden rule when it comes to agents: never pay a single penny to them to find work for you. Agents are paid by the school to find teachers, not by the teachers themselves.
Emailing On Spec
If you can find a list of schools in a particular area you’d like to work in, simply compose a decent cover letter and send it off on spec to them. It can work regardless of the time of year as your email may well arrive at a school who has just lost a teacher and you will be in prime place to replace them.
In Person
Many teachers have found work simply by turning up on a school doorstep when the school is in need of a teacher. This is often the only way if you do not have the usual qualifications to get a job.
Quite simply fly to the country of your choice and make a planned assault on every single school you can find. It will often turn out that sooner or later a school will be in need of a teacher either part or full time and will be happy to employ someone there and then.
A few useful ideas here:
- Make sure you have enough money to tide you over in your country of choice for a few months in case work doesn't come through. And make sure you have a return ticket or the airfare home so you can get home if the worst comes to the worst.
- Fly in to the country at the start of the school year; this is when demand for teachers is at its greatest.
Plan it well:
- Make copies of your resume/CV and certificates and staple sets of them together in clear plastic envelopes to leave at the schools; do all this beforehand because you don't want to be traipsing round town looking for a photocopy shop the day you arrive.
- Go to the largest city and get a cheap room in a hostel, for example.
- Get the local equivalent of the Yellow Pages and get the address of every single school. Mark them out on a map.
- Start walking and take the first job that is offered you!
In other words, you go round to every single school in town and see if they need a teacher. Make sure you have your resume or CV to leave and contact details (your email and a phone number if you have one there).
Also, don't forget to find the local Irish/Australian (or whatever) bar where foreigners hang out and talk to the staff there; they may well be able to point you in the right direction and, if all else fails, they may be able to suggest work outside teaching (e.g. in the Irish/Australian bar!).
Tips
- If you, as a teacher, have a specialised area of knowledge then by all means you can use this to help find work. For example, if you spent your summer vacations working on a building site then you will have specialist knowledge of terms and actions in the building industry and this can be used to help find work in the ESP field. If you are working overseas then you could easily approach local building firms and offer specialised ESP lessons to their staff and pick up some extra work in this way.
- Some countries also run government-sponsored programs which place teachers in schools. See EPIK for programs in South Korea and MoE - Spain for jobs in Spain.
- Make sure you read the page on interviews for tips on face-to-face interviews at schools.
