How to Get a Job in an International School - Preparing for and Attending a Recruiting Fair

Make Your Travel Plans

Once you've registered for a job fair, the first thing you should do is book your hotel.I highly recommend staying in the hotel where the fair is being held not only because your days at the job fair will likely be very long and you will need all the spare adrenalin you can use, but more importantly, because you’ll want to be close to the centre of the action. Yes, these hotels cost a fortune for teachers who, unlike school recruiters, are not travelling on an expense account, but unfortunately this is the way it is done. As many teachers in the international circuit will tell you, “You have to be willing to pay to work”.

Staying in the same hotel as the fair is expensive, but does have its pros. For instance, recruiters often want to schedule 2^nd interviews or may ask you to drop by later in the day; it is much less of a schlep for you if you’re close at hand. Recruiters may also come looking for you in the hotel lounge in the evening, want to call you in your room or slip a note under your door. Even with cell phones, it still makes it a lot more convenient for both you and the recruiter if you are in, or close to, the hotel. Besides, you can’t always rely on mobiles. A lot of things happen can happen on the spur of the moment and it helps if you’re on site. Besides, the whole hullabaloo of the fair is a lot less stressful and exhausting if you can go back to your own space close by to steal a quiet moment alone to think things through.

Spend Time Checking Job Postings and Researching Schools

Before attending a fair it is a good idea to spend time looking at job postings on the recruitment agency web sites and researching the schools with positions in your area of expertise. You may want to email these schools to set up a dialogue before a job fair. Some school directors will reply and want to set up an interview day and time with you during or just before a job fair, most likely at the hotel. Some candidates will arrive at the job fair with a job offer already in hand. Don’t be surprised, however, if you never hear from directors of schools at which you really hope to work until you arrive at the job fair. Many prefer not to communicate with candidates until then as their school’s vacancies change weekly, sometimes daily and even hourly. I once was on the shortlist for a position which I desperately wanted only to find out, shortly before the fair, that the job was no longer available because the librarian had decided to stay on another year. It seems he hadn’t got anything he really wanted at the Bangkok fair, which fell about three weeks before the London February fair. That same year a job disappeared before my eyes when a teacher who was already at the school where I hoped to work decided to take the job I wanted. Thus, many recruiters do not respond to emails while others are simply too busy. Some do respond, however, as the director who had shortlisted me did, and so it’s always worth a try. Just don’t assume it’s because they are not interested. Directors are usually swamped during the recruiting season and it does not necessarily mean anything if they don’t answer. Indeed, I once wrote to a director twice before a job fair because the job posting had appeared and then disappeared and then reappeared again, but still I didn’t hear anything. It turned out that the director’s silence meant little because I was hired practically on the spot, once at the fair. And others still just don’t know for sure whether their advertised positions are tentative or definite until they arrive at the fair.

It is always good to know a little about the countries where the school is located, so spend time learning about the ones where the schools you are interested in are located.

Below are some other things to do while preparing for a job fair:

• update your résumé
• get some passport size photos of yourself to attach to your résumé – recruiters meet hundreds of candidates, so this helps them to attach a face to the name
• study the salary and benefits packages offered by different schools in different countries. Be aware that the salary may seem ridiculously low, but if the cost of living in that country is comparably low, you may be able to do a lot of travelling and/or save good money. In Egypt I was not being paid very well, but I was also not being taxed, so I was able to send money home for payments I had in Canada and I was also able to do quite a bit of travelling. The reverse is also true of schools in more prosperous countries where the salary may seem good, even high, but if cost of living is prohibitively high, as in the Bahamas, then you may well be paying to live there.
• prepare brief answers to standard interview questions with good, clear examples of how you have done something before or how you might t apply your skills and experience at such and such school
• practice your interviewing skills with a friend, partner or relative
• practice your answers so that you know what you might say to typical interview questions but also be sure to sound natural. Recruiters have little time to make their hiring decisions. They want good teachers, of course, but what most international recruiters really want to see is who you are as a person and whether you will be a good “fit” for their school, will you work well with your colleagues, will you adapt well to your new surroundings and to the culture of the school. If you’re a couple they want to see how you are as a couple, how “solid” or well-established you are together. The thinking goes that couples who are not strong together may not be able to survive the stress of living and working overseas. If you are going as a teaching couple, be prepared for some questions directed to you both as a couple that will have absolutely nothing to do with your philosophy of education or your teaching ability. If you are going as a single person, you should also expect questions about your ability to adapt to new situations under stress.
• prepare some questions for the recruiter about such things as academic standards; student population; teacher camaraderie; parent expectations; quality of resources available at the school; school facilities; orientation for new teachers; administrative support for teachers; if you have children, how well are the children of teachers accepted at the school and by the culture; professional development; transportation to and from the school (if applicable); how discipline issues are handled; the country and culture; standard of living; cost of living; accessibility and quality of cultural and recreational activities; telecommunications and internet access; accommodation for teachers; housing allowance (if any); daily life; quality of health care; extra-curricular programs and load
• have with you a lightweight portfolio of a few simple but illustrative examples of your students’ work or some photos of them engaging in some kind of interactive creative or hands-on activity
• buy nice paper or cards for thank you notes – or make them yourself
• pack professional yet comfortable clothes for the sign up session and interviews – wear clothes that you would wear to work on a “good” day, maybe the first day of school, something that you feel good and yourself in, but no so dressed down that you look like you just got off a plane after 10 hours of flying or too dressed up that you feel stiff or overly formal.
• Consider subscribing to International Schools Review, a web site and forum for teachers on which teachers can review and rate schools and directors. An annual subscription costs $29.

Attend the Recruiting Fair

International schools recruiting fairs are the annual Fifa World Cup of the international schools industry. Fairs are intense, stressful, fun, a great high, emotional, a learning experience, exciting, an enormous let down, interesting, exhausting, a great place to meet people, and more. Each recruiting agency runs fairs in different cities in North America, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and the UK. In February, International Schools Services usually runs one fair in Boston or New York and one in a west coast city, usually San Francisco. They also host one in June in Philadelphia. Search Associates runs the most fairs. Between January and June they run one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one in Toronto, two in London, one in Bangkok, one in Dubai, and one in Bethesda, Maryland in June. Each fair has its own distinct feel, or flavour. The Queen’s University fair in Kingston, Ontario, for instance, is a small, easygoing kind of fair known as a “new teachers” fair, though, of course, many experienced teachers also attend. The Search Associates Cambridge, MA fair is highly competitive and is often referred to as a “couples” and “specialist teachers” fair while the Iowa fair, though professional, is sometimes said to be a “meat market” as it is especially large. ISS fairs are also very large and tend to attract mainly American teachers while the majority of candidates at CIS fairs are British and attract a lot of European schools. The Search London fair in early February is the “IB” fair and represents IB schools and IB-trained teachers. These are generalizations, of course, but it is useful to keep them in mind when deciding which fair to attend. For more information on job fairs see the web sites of each of the recruiting agencies as well as articles on this topic on the International Schools Review website at International Schools Review.

For the recruiting fair schedule for the 2010/2011 recruiting season see

International Schools Recruitment Fair Schedule 2010-2011

The important is to try to stay positive and to talk to as many people as possible. When you're not interviewing, strike up conversations with other teaching candidates in the candidates' lounge or in the hotel lounge or café . Not only can you meet some nice people but it's really amazing what you learn about the whole world of international teaching from talking to others.

Easier said than done but try not to compare yourself to others. Some people get several job offers within a day or two while others get none or only one. As I said in my more general hub on the subject of international school teaching, it’s all a bit of a lottery. One year I went to two job fairs and got no offers while the following year I went to only one and was the belle of the ball, so to speak. This happens to many others as well.

If you're a new teacher you want to keep your options open. Don't set your hopes on the really top schools in the countries where everybody and his dog wants to teach. Everybody does that to a certain extent, but when you're new and don't have any overseas experience a lot of schools won't even look at you. It's really upsetting when it happens, but don't get discouraged. To get those good jobs in those really great schools you need to get experience. That means that you may have to consider countries you wouldn't have imagined yourself going to until the weekend of the fair. If you want to make a career of international teaching all you need is just one good school that is willing to take a chance on you, one director that believes in you.

Important note: if you get one or more job offers, don't say yes right away. Take some time to mull things over. This is a major life decision you are making and it could affect your life and your career in more ways than you could ever imagine - for both the better and the worse. If a recruiter is pressuring you to give him or her an answer immediately, he or she or the school may not be worth it. You will have to give an answer soon, probably within 24 hours, but if you're not sure, take that 24 hours to consider the offer(s). If you get a bad feeling, even just a smidgen of a strange vibe from a recruiter, trust your instincts. It's sad to say, but many bullies and toxic bosses hold sway in international schools. I have survived a few of these myself in recent years, and wish I had trusted my own instincts. Some recruiters will outright lie to teachers about their school and living conditions in the host country, and so teachers can end up in some rather tight, at times dangerous, spots as a result. This is not said to discourage anyone from international teaching. It can be a really great life but not if you end up in a school run by a bully. Just be aware, and remember that you also are interviewing the school.

Even if you don’t get a job offer at a big fair in January or February, you may get one or more from a job interview you had at the fair a week or a month later. Keep your hopes up and look out for yourself.