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| Picture by Six Intheworld via Flickr |
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.
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.
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