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© 2007 Kelly Blackwell. All rights reserved.
December 2007
Welcome
to the TeachOverseas.infonewsletter for December.Happy holidays...December is the month that theinternational school recruiting seasonreally kicks off with the first job fairbeing held this month in Sydney,Australia.
Contents
 
Removing the Stress fromInternational Teaching JobFairs
 – 
 
With the kick-off of theinternational school recruitment seasonimminent, teachers are busy preparingtheir resumes and finalizing their jobfair applications. International teaching job fairs can be a real zoo to theuninitiated, learn how to reduce stressand increase your chances of landing afantastic teaching job abroad...
 
Recruitment Fair InterviewReality
 – 
Attending a teachingabroad job fair can be a nerve wrackingexperience, especially if you have notreceived any responses from theinternational school recruiters to yourpre-
fair approaches. Here’s how it really 
 works...
Removing the Stress fromInternational Teaching JobFairs
Attending an international teaching jobfair can be very stressful. Whether it isfor your first teaching job overseas or your tenth, international job fairs canplay havoc with your nerves.
 
 This stress can affect your ability to show your best side to recruiters, so eliminatingit is a priority. One sure fire way to reduceor even remove the stress you feel is tohave a backup plan.Your backup plan can take many guises.Here are two that I have used successfullyin the past to make attending overseasteaching recruitment events more bearable:
1. Plan to attend more than oneoverseas recruiting fair
 There are more than ten job fairs each yearthat are dedicated to international schoolteacher recruitment, and you can apply toattend more than one per year. You caneven attend more than one organized bythe same recruiting agency.Not every international school attends eachfair. You can meet directors from manydifferent international schools if you go tomore than one job fair. One way to ensurethat you get maximum exposure torecruiters is to apply to attend more thanone fair. The different job fair organizers; SearchAssociates, CIS and ISS have differentschools recruiting with them, so mixing up your job fair registration and attendingmore than one job fair can increase yourchances of finding the perfect overseasteaching position for you.
 
 
© 2007 Kelly Blackwell. All rights reserved.
Cont’d
Removing the Stress fromInternational Teaching JobFairs
Many of the job fair organizers offer jobfairs in the same locations back toback, so you can fly into Bangkok orLondon for example and attend two jobfairs organized by two agencies in asingle trip. Full details of the dates andlocations of the job fairs organized bythe three big organizers are available in The Complete Guide to Securing a Jobat an International School.
2. Know what your next move will be if you do not get offered aninternational teaching contract thisacademic year.
When I attended my first internationalteaching job fair I had two backupplans in the unlikely event that none of the school directors offered me acontract. I did not have to implementeither of them, which is a shame insome ways, because my backup plans were almost as exciting as teachingabroad in an international school!Here are some backup plans you may wish to explore...
 
taking a year out and travellingaround the world - you can findplaces you would like to livealong the way and beginrelationships with recruiters byvisiting them at their schools.
 
volunteering with an organizationthat teaches refugees or works withlocal teachers to improvemethodology and pedagogy - this isan excellent way to gaininternational experience which willmake you more attractive tointernational school recruiters.
 
signing up with the Teachers on theMove, a company that findstemporary teachers for internationalschools to cover for maternity or longterm sickness positions.
 
applying for a teacher exchangeprogram such as the JET programthat places teachers in Japanesepublic schools, or the VIF program which places overseas trainedteachers in American public schools.Once you have made your decision toattend a job fair and received yourinvitation, you need to prepare for anintense two days in a pressure-cookerenvironment. Careful planning prior to theevent and conscious networking at theevent are the keys to landing a greatteaching job abroad.
 
 
© 2007 Kelly Blackwell. All rights reserved.
Recruitment FairInterview
 
Reality
You will be surprised at the number of teaching job interviews you will beinvited to attend at an internationalrecruitment job fair. You may be worried because you have sent out yourresume to all the recruiters on the job
fair organizer’s list of schools that have
vacancies in your teaching area and yet you have received no responses, or onlyautomated responses. Trust me, this is not a problem!You will probably find that when youarrive for the orientation session andcheck your mailbox that you havereceived a number of interviewinvitations from those very samerecruiters that have not sent you apersonal response to your initialattempts to make contact.One colleague of mine said she receivedinterview invitations from 26 schools atthe last job fair she attended. Another
reported that she’d spent hours sending
out her resume to differentinternational school recruiters andreceived a very disappointing responsepre-job fair; however she also receivedan astounding number of interviewrequests at the job fair.So, what does this mean to you? You will need to be prepared with amechanism to quickly and easily turndown interview requests because thechances are you will be invited to interview with schools that you have no interest inteaching for.One way to prepare for this contingency is
to prepare ‘thanks but no thanks’ notes
ahead of the job fair. You can then fill inthe blanks on the refusal letter and eitherpass it on to the recruiters at the sign upsession on the first morning of the fair, put
it in the recruiter’s mailbox, or slip it under
the door of their hotel room.When you are preparing your applicationpacks to take with you to the teaching jobfair you simply prepare and print somecopies of your refusal letter and take them with you to the fair.A major problem with this plan occurs if  you have not prepared enough of the notes,as my colleague experienced when shereceived interview invitations from 26schools, of which she was only interestedin two! What do you do then? You will haveto resort to hand-written notes.Another option is to take along a pad of Post-It notes. Post-It notes can be stuck tohotel room doors or on to the r
ecruiter’s
table at the sign-up session. A bonus tousing this method is that your note will notbe accidentally mixed in among otherpapers because it is both sticky andcolourful.
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