A Recruiting Teacher - the last stage... the job fair

As many of you know, we accepted positions in Beijing next year.  We are very excited about our new jobs and new adventure.  The responses we get when we tell people we are moving to Beijing are interesting.  We are truly happy and can't wait.  All jobs have pros and cons.  The obvious cons being pollution and the cold winters (for me) but the perks are huge: a great school community for both us and the kids, a LARGE diverse city, and our jobs are perfect (which is tricky when recruiting as a couple).

We accepted positions at the end of November, so we did not have to attend the SEARCH Bangkok Job Fair. We still planned to be in Bangkok at the time, so we were there right in the middle of it, but got to watch it from afar.  It's a strange occurrence: hundreds of international teachers within a three block radius in Bangkok either looking for employees or looking for an employer.  We must have saw twenty people that we new from the past ten years of working abroad.

We were able to meet our new headmaster, HR director, principal (who we actually worked with before) and a student from our new school.  It was great.  We had amazing street food close from the hotel and got to know each other better, which was really nice.  It got us even more excited about going to work at our new school.

Back to the job fair...  once you walk into the hotel where the fair takes place, you can immediately feel the tension in the air and see the wild eyes in teachers looking for jobs.  First off, potential employees and employers are labelled - one with a red lanyard and one with a blue lanyard, so you can clear identify who is who.

There is a set time where the doors open in a large conference room and schools all have tables with their job openings listed behind them. You queue up in lines that have openings for you (and usually split to do this as a couple) hand your resume and give your best smile and 1 minute pitch and hope for an interview.   So then, you have interview sign-ups for later in the day and the next day.

You have these interviews in hotel rooms of the administrators.  It is a bit weird.  As a couple, you possible interview together - which is, um, interesting, or  you interview separately with different principals or administrators.

Then, you hopefully nail something good - get a good reference check and then are offered a contract. We had a lot of friends recruiting this year and we are all going to different places all over the world. Recruiting season is super stressful, but it is an exciting time where you usually end up in a place you never considered (Beijing, Japan and Peru, all fit in this category) for another amazing, unique experience.

However, this is changing with the ease of interviewing over Skype.  It'll be interesting to see what happens with the job fairs over the next few years.  It's an expensive event for both teachers and schools to go to Bangkok, and sometimes, London, Boston, etc.  I'm thinking there will be less fairs and maybe more for teachers just getting into the international school circuit, but who knows.

Now we are on to another big job as we finish out our contract in Japan... getting all the pieces together for our Chinese visa!  Whoa!

A Silent Time During International School Recruiting

Image Credit: silence by Rebecca Barray via Flickr CC

I was going to try to document our recruiting process a bit better, but right now, while I have so much to say, there's nothing I want to say publicly.

There is a long period of waiting as jobs get posted and as we apply... but there's nothing to report, although there are many ups and downs to our days - checking the job postings, finding or not finding positions at schools you want to work at and waiting for replies.

To sum-up our last few weeks, we've felt both anxiety and excitement. We've lost sleep, our (well, mine more than John's) brains are often running in a million directions, we constantly research schools and countries, and we fantasize about many "what-if" scenarios.

We have been lucky enough to have a couple of interviews.  It's still early in the process and this is not necessarily the norm.  However, Skyping to try to sell yourself to a stranger in a 60 minute interview (after a full day of work and getting the kids settled in for the night) is HARD!

In our thoughts and conversations, we have gone from Prague to Bangkok to Johannesburg to Buenos Aires to Vientiane to Luanda to Singapore to Sao Paolo and back again many times.  This is both exciting and exhausting!

We have not been offered any contracts.  It is still early.  Most schools do not have all their "definite" job openings yet. We would like to try to sign contracts before the end of November and we'd really like to not have to attend the job fair in Bangkok in January, but we've made reservations to go there, just in case.

While we feel extremely lucky to be able to move to another country to another amazing school, it is stressful.

There are A LOT of teachers in the international circuit and teachers in their home countries trying to get into the international schools circuit.  Our small school alone gets many applications EVERY day. I can't imagine how many applicants some of the large big-name schools must get for their positions. There are many qualified applicants for the same jobs.

In my opinion, it really comes down to this:

1 - Who you know
 *** Extra perk if they have hiring power ***
Since administrators receive CVs from so many qualified applicants (and really anyone can look good on a CV these days), it is good if the administrator knows you/has worked with you before.  (Or someone who has some serious weight is a close connection to both you and the person hiring.) Beyond how great a teacher you are, schools are looking for teachers/families that fit in well with the culture and need at their school.

2 - The puzzle piece of the jobs that are open for that year at schools
Right now there are 35 positions open for me on SEARCH Associates. I could add another 15 looking at the Middle School English jobs open right now, too.  Now I would easily narrow that down to about 10 schools where we would actually work.  Next, you match up jobs that I want coupled with John's position as a Secondary Librarian....  drum roll please...  we are down to 4 - FOUR - schools!  Now, they are four FANTASTIC schools, that we'd love to work in, but eesh.

For me, the scariest part of this is that you may not be hired, even though you are the best person for the job! If there is another couple that fits better, for example a Physics teacher and a Librarian, because the Physics position is trickier to fill than say a middle school teacher position, then they'll get that Library job, and we.are.out! *sob*

3 - LUCK!

Luck and timing are everything. I realize this is true in all parts of life.

So, we continue to hustle.  We can't catch the fish if we don't put our line in the water.  We are applying, talking to friends all over the world and we continue to wait (and try to be patient).

So the silence for us will continue a bit longer.  We don't know where the cards will fall.  I'm always a little wary of "jinxing" something that seems good and exciting, because you never know.  Last time we recruiting, we made it through the second round of interviews at a school and then didn't get it.

Hopefully we'll have exciting news to share soon, but until then.  I'll try to sleep and keep my excessive email checking to a minimum.

International Teaching: We Are All in the Same Place

I distinctly remember when John and I were about the head to Peru and thinking... this is going to be weird, working together.

Now, not working together seems even stranger.  There are so many perks of being all at the same place.  Once and a while, John and I have lunch together which is a nice treat.

But best of all, we get to participate in the kids' activities.  Last week John got to go to Kande Farms with Maximo as a part of their Farm to Table and Systems Unit and I was lucky enough to make bread with 36 second graders.

So What DO we want?

Image Credit: www.meets.com

Searching for the perfect school and finding the perfect match is tricky.  We have decided this is our year to recruit... there is no going back. We have put our notice in.  But, now we are at the mercy of what positions open up at schools that we want to work at.  John and I have pretty specialized jobs, so that right there narrows down our opportunities.

There are so many factors that go into choosing the right place.  These are our thoughts...

First and for most, we want to be safe, happy and we want our kids to flourish.
No place is perfect.  BUT, there are a lot of great places out there that we would be very happy moving to.  When positions pop up, it's definitely a conversation of positions, school and country.

If we were going to make a criteria of what we are looking for kind of in order, this is what it look like:

1. Bigger school (like 850-1500 Pre-K - 12)
2. Strong, established school with vibrant curriculum and programs
3. Library position for John
4. Safe country
5. Interesting city/country
6. Warm climate


Extra perks:

• Being able to communicate better (either a language we already speak =: English or Spanish OR I language easier to learn than Japanese, preferably with a phonetic writing system).
• Cool living space with a bit more room.  Extras:  an outdoor area, grill, pool?

We have been talking about moving a lot with the kids, so they aren't freaked out about it.  Luckily they have seen a lot of friends come and go, so it isn't as foreign as it would have been to me as a child.  When we asking them things about moving, some really funny conversations come up.  This is what the kids want in our next home:

Maximo's Wishes
1. Two bathrooms in our home
2. To be near a beach
3. A pet

Lola's Wishes
1. To move to Legoland
2. A pet

Part 1 of Our Process of Recruiting as International Teachers

Recruiting Season as an International School Teacher

Photo Credit: Travel by Moyan Brenn via FlickrCC

Most of our family and close friends know that we are leaving Japan at the end of the school year. This is our seventh year at Canadian Academy and it's been a good run:
Our family of babies has transformed into a family of funny, independent elementary schoolers...

John and I both changed our jobs within teaching with more courses, certifications and determination.

We have enjoyed our time in Japan... but it is time.

We got into international teaching to travel and see the world as we got to work at some of the best schools in the world. We are ready for new adventures, new jobs, a new culture, a new home.

The international recruiting thing is quite a process.  Let me share our past few months with you... and where we are now.

First, it takes a LONG time to revise a resume, get recommendations, writing a bio and/or education philosophy statement. It's really hard to sell yourself on one piece of paper for one database. This is what John and I both worked on over the summer.

Next, we paid for SEARCH Associates to represent us in our recruiting and add us to their database. We also signed up for the Bangkok job fair in January, but we hope that we will already have a job by January and not have to go. *fingers crossed*

Third, we contacted administrators that we know and want to work with again and are at schools that we want to work at. We have some criteria and have narrowed down our "top" schools... I'll share that in another post.

And now, we wait.

The crazy thing about recruiting as an international teacher is you pretty much have to give up your job to get a new one.  We have sent in our resignation letters for June 2016! [I still feel like this is so crazy] It actually felt really REAL when we saw our own jobs posted on the database... there's no turning back now.

Every morning we get an email from the database of new jobs posted that day and the database allows us to search schools and jobs.  It also allows us to see the profile/packages of the schools which varies immensely.  Most schools have early decisions bonuses in October, so more will be posted then, but many schools have to receive contracts by December, so that is more the definite date.  This date is even later in Europe.

So now, we dream ...  We are enjoying the daily job notifications over our morning coffee.  John and I have gotten really specialized over the past few years (Librarian and Tech Coordinator/Coach), so it's tricky to find a perfect match.

But even with this, our conversations have ebbed from Africa to South America to Asia to Europe... It's fun to imagine ourselves somewhere new next year. It's fun to research more about the school and living in that country. Hopefully we'll have a contract in the next two months. For now, it's fun to dream and think about how lucky we are to have the opportunity to be somewhere else in the world in 10 months.  But for now we wait...

Image Credit: Travel Journal by Kasaa via FlickrCC