The Truth about TEFL 2: All about applications

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So you decide to do a TEFL course-you've endured a ridiculous workload, overly high standards and patronising instructors but the end is finally in sight and you feel like all your hard work (and financial investment)  is going to pay off after all. That's when you get given the career talk and they drop the bombshell: you're not going to find a job - especially if you have a set of criteria - easily, if at all. There are thousands of people just like you, they say, and hundreds of TEFL courses. What employers are looking for is experience. If you’re like me, at this point you start to believe that your life is some hideous groundhog day-esque tragicomedy but fear not! The real picture of the TEFL job market is not as bleak and they’d have you believe.

First of all however, you need to adapt your expectations: if you’re going to be picky, you’ll have difficulty finding something. To be honest, if you want to work outside of Spain, Turkey or Saudi Arabia you’re out of luck unless you have experience. You also need to forget about jobs at prestigious or established schools – they can afford to be selective, you can’t. Also forget about finding work in large, glamorous European cities – partly because the competition in these places is a lot stronger but also because your money will go a lot further in small towns and villages.

Next you need to decide on how you want to progress: you can either dive straight into a long-term position and start applying to language schools immediately or (if you qualify relatively close to summer) you can decide to work summer schools first to get some experience before you launch into more serious applications. There are three advantages to going the summer school route: first, the aforementioned experience, second the lack of experience needed to get a job on one and third they pay extremely well – especially if the programme is residential. A word of warning though – you need to be available from the beginning of July for the majority of these positions, so don’t do what I did and book your holiday for this term two years in a row.

The best place I found to actually look for jobs was www.TEFL.com as it is reliable and fairly reputable. For jobs in Spain www.spainwise.com is excellent for job postings and as a reference for checking the school is legitimate – this is something you need to do whenever you’re offered a position because there are some fairly dodgy EFL schools out there and you don’t want to be stuck providing slave labour for a school in Hong Kong for a year. When you’re applying DON’T apply through the website – use the contact details it provides but send an application by e-mail as I found this was far more likely to get a response. Also ignore the at least one years experience criterion and apply for those jobs anyway – more often than not you’ll make it to interview, despite your CV lacking in this area.

Finally, be prepared to wait out the market. TEFL is a notoriously fickle market and lots of people use these jobs as a back-up for other plans. As a result of this, teachers quite often leave schools hanging at the last moment and, as September approaches, hiring requirements drop drastically as employers panic about not being fully staffed by the beginning of term. It’s at this point that you’re most likely to have success in finding a position that meets some of your own criteria after months of compromising.

If you found this helpful and would like to know more about my TEFL experiences, check out part one of this series here and check back in next month for part 3 where I’ll be talking about how to ace your skype interview.

The Other Side of the Desk: Interviewers are people too

The other day I was sitting in the office, getting on with my work when the conversation turned to the upcoming interviews with prospective interns – intrigued I watched as the established members of staff debated who was going to have to do it and then googled interview questions to ask. It really brought home to me the rather obvious fact that interviewers are people too – most of them are just like you!

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Chances are that most people know somebody who has had to conduct interviews as part of their job from time to time – very few companies outside of huge multinationals hire people purely to hire and fire employees and the smaller the company, the lower down the chain of command the interviewer is likely to be as there will be fewer layers of management. As your career progresses – or your job hunt if you’re particularly unlucky – you will find yourself increasingly likely to be interviewed by somebody the same age as you, somebody who, outside of the interview room, you would likely consider a peer. Somebody just. Like. You.

So why is this grand realisation so important?

Well, firstly it helps even the playing field in your mind: it can be easy to imagine the person on the other side of the desk from you as a remote, all-powerful figure because they do, in fact, have the power to affect your future. What it is important to remember is that you have the potential to similarly affect their life in turn – whoever is hired after all will be the person they work with on a regular basis. Thought about this way, interviews become much less about a supplicant and a powerful figure and more of a negotiation – you are trying to convince them to invest in you as a person and they are trying to establish that you will provide the best possible return on their investment. If you treat the interview as an egalitarian transaction, you are likely to be more comfortable and confident and, as a result, more likely to get what you want out of the meeting.

Another consequence of realising that interviewers are people too is accepting that they are as subject to the whims of fate and the caprices of human emotion as anybody else. If your interview is on a day when their train has been late or they’ve just lost an important contract you are likely to fare worse in comparison to an interviewee on a different day purely by association with negative emotion. While there is nothing you can do to affect this, it does help with the realisation of just how many unknown variables there are in any hiring decision and how little part your value as an individual often plays in such decisions.

Something you do have control over however is your behaviour in the interview: it’s important to pay attention to the clues an interviewer drops about the kind of person they are. People are usually drawn to similar personality types so if your interviewer seems particularly outgoing or friendly, react accordingly; if they seem more reserved, make sure your demeanour mirrors theirs.

At the end of the day it is your interviewer as a person who makes the decision about you and so it is as a person that you need to visualise them when doing your interview preparation – make sure you treat them like a human being and remember that in a year or two it could be you sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk.

Looking for more interview advice? Take a look at Dressingto Impress , Interview Danger Zones and Ten Tips for Reducing Interview Stress.

Dressing to Impress: top tips for interview outfits

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They say you only get one chance to make a first impression and that’s especially true when it comes to job interviews. You usually have less than an hour to make yourself memorable and to ensure that your best features are highlighted and that you leave them with a positive memory of you, both as a potential employee and as a person. At the same time, as we all know, interviews (and interviewers) are terrifying and unpredictable – sometimes they can go incredibly well and sometimes you can feel like you’ve stepped into the coliseum without a shield. With this in mind then, the last thing you want is for your appearance – one of the few variables in the situation that you can control – to let you down. You might be the brightest legal mind of our generation or a technical wizard but all that’s going to stick with your interviewer if you don’t take care with your appearance is the huge ladder in your tights or how greasy your hair looked. Lest you completely freak out however, I am here to sort you out with my five top tips on what (and what not) to wear to your interview.

1. Business smart and formal-smart are not the same thing. Obviously everybody wants to look their best in and interview and stand out from the crowd, and smart dress is important however there’s no need to go overboard. Unless you are auditioning for the Wolf of Wall Street you should not turn up in a three piece suit – it’s pretentious and out-dressing your interviewer will do you no favours. Ditto bow ties, hats and hipster accessories – your clothes should be the velvet backdrop to your sparkling personality, not the main attraction. Likewise ladies dresses that you would wear to ascot are not interview appropriate – stick with the basics here and try to keep to muted tones with maybe one key colourful piece rather than eye-catching patterns or haute-couture styling.

 2. Read the information they give you and abide by it. Increasingly, many industries are taking a much more relaxed attitude to dress in the office, especially if your role isn’t client facing and this sometimes translates into a recommendation for smart-casual interview wear. This is not a trap – take them at their word. Turning up suited and booted to an ‘informal’ interview is not appropriate and will leave them with the impression that you would not be a good fit for their more casual work environment.

3.   3. Personal grooming is not optional. I’m not suggesting that every interview should be preceded by a spa day or – as one book rather unrealistically suggested – a haircut. Showering, deodorising, trimming your nails and moisturising (guys and girls) however should be mandatory interview preparation. You want to look your best and shiny hair, neatly trimmed nails and well-tended skin are, unsurprisingly, an important part of that. Even if it’s not part of your normal routine, you need to make an effort for interview days.

4.      4.  Pay attention to the details. It can be the smallest imperfections sometimes that utterly preoccupy a person – and this is as true of interviewers as it is of anybody else. So shine those shoes, carry a spare pair of tights and if you’re nail polish is chipped either re-apply or take it off. A friend once told me that her father, who held an influential position in a big company, once told her that he judged interview candidates by the quality of their shoes, so it’s worth taking the time to go over your appearance with a fine tooth comb – and a sticky roller.

5.       5.. Wear something comfortable. Runners will tell you never to get new shoes before a race and the same is true for interview outfits – do not buy new clothes for the occasion! The whole experience is going to be excruciatingly uncomfortable mentally and emotionally as it is – there’s no need to add physical discomfort to the mix. Wear something you love, something that gives you a boost when you see yourself in it. If you feel you need to wear heels (girls) or uncomfortable dress shoes (boys) carry a spare pair for before and after the interview – after all during should be largely sedentary. Make sure you have layers so that you’re not too cold or too hot and make sure your clothes fit you the day before the interview, as there is nothing worse than a last minute, panicked rummage through the wardrobe or run around the shops.

Ultimately, if you follow only one of those rules make it the last one – the way you feel physically will transmit itself through your performance at interview and feeling comfortable will make you look comfortable. For more information about the importance of appearance in interview success check out my article on the halo effect.

Experience: the Catch 22 of job hunting

When it comes to job hunting there’s one element that frustrates and angers me the most – to the extent that I sometimes feel like jeopardising the occasional interview just to get it off my chest – and that’s the issue of experience.

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In the current economic climate experience is prized for two reasons: one, it means that the company doesn't have to train you, nurture you or invest any more money and time in you than is absolutely necessary to make sure you understand the role and two, with the amount of redundancies being instituted across the spectrum of industries, there are an awful lot of experienced candidates out there. Now, in all fairness, you can’t blame companies for this, however it leaves new arrivals to the job market with their very own catch 22: can’t get a job without experience, can’t get experience without a job. 

This is less of a problem if you’re going down the corporate graduate scheme route (although you may still be surprised by the weighting that is given to summer jobs and internships and the expectation that you will have experience of one or the other). If you want to get into any kind of less mainstream career however, the job hunter’s catch 22 can leave you feeling like you’re staring through a glass door that you can’t get through because you don’t have a key – you can see where you want to be, you just don’t have the means to get there.

The unspoken message that companies are sending of course is that you need to get the experience you need in some other way than formalised employment – usually by working for free. It’s unfair, unfeasible for many and ultimately doesn’t do businesses any favours in the long run but these days most graduates without vocational career pathways are resigned to either doing the unpaid legwork, approaching their desired career in an extremely roundabout manner or giving up on it completely.

Unfortunately there isn't a never before heard solution or lifehack for dealing with this problem – if there was, believe me, I would spread the love. However, I do have some ways of dealing with this conundrum that might make the application process a bit easier.

Do the internship but minimise the damage.

Obviously not everybody is able to work for free or has guaranteed parental accommodation but there are strategies for handling the internship to minimise its negative impact on your life. A short-term internship that pays expenses is one option – it doesn’t cost you anything and it can get you on to the next step of your career journey. Alternatively you may be able to work out a part-time internship alongside another, less ideal, job. If you can’t manage a long term internship, at the very least try to get a few days work experience or shadowing in the industry of your choice – anything you can do to inch your CV up the pile makes a difference.

Give them something else they want

Although experience is prized by employers there are other skills and qualifications that you can develop that they may find sufficiently valuable to make up the difference on your CV. Languages are a good example – Spanish, German, Arabic, Chinese and Italian are frequently sought after by employers and there are often adult education classes run by your local authority that are discounted for those not in employment.  Another option is to develop your computer skills – but in a specific area. Everyone is good at MS Office but if you can demonstrate database management skills, knowledge of coding, web design expertise or graphic design abilities you can increase your on paper value to the companies you’re applying to.

Use the power of networking

The adage that it’s not what you know it’s who you know remains true even in 2014 so it’s worth examining your contacts for common ground with your interviewer or the company you’re applying to. If you can manage an informal introduction or meeting with someone before you present yourself formally they will have a face to put with the application – and it’s much harder to reject someone out of hand if they’ve already bought you coffee. Similarly, if you’ve been to the same university as the person in charge of the recruiting or you used to work at the same company or you even support the same football team then you are presenting yourself as someone familiar rather than a complete stranger and they are less likely to focus on your lack of experience if you have a common ground to discuss. Most positions are won or lost face to face, so if you get to that stage, any advantage is crucial. Attending industry events or conferences is another way to build up these connections – even if you don’t manage to meet the people you want to, just being able to talk about the event in cover letters and interviews will put you further up the shortlist.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee that following these paths with guarantee you success but your chances will increase and – most importantly – you will be actively involved in improving your changes rather than feeling increasingly impotent and resentful with every rejection and sometimes attitude is half the battle. Read here for more tips on dealing with rejection proactively.