(Two posts in one month? Don’t get used to it.)
In 2013, I decided my life needed direction. I was still stewing over a bad break-up, my writing career wasn’t earning me anything and I’d spent a long time out of work. My options weren’t great. I spent a year in postgraduate study to try and re-enter the workforce at the end of it, which didn’t go the way I’d hoped.
A friend put me in touch with the world of TEFL teaching – Teaching English as a Foreign Language. He spent a year overseas after a month of training and came back full of stories of what the world outside our grey, rainy isle was like. I decided to take the leap.
By the end of February, I was a certified TEFL teacher. In May, I landed my first teaching job. This wasn’t without struggles. The one I got wasn’t the first one I applied for, or even interviewed for. It’s definitely worth going through agencies and recruiters. But make sure they understand the concept of ‘time difference’; every Skype or phone interview I had suffered from some lost-in-translation time error. This applied to China and to Korea.
The job I landed was in Korea. The phone interview came an hour earlier than expected and had to be done while wearing a towel. Next came sorting the paperwork. My CRB check was easy, but slow. Then my CRB check and degrees had to be apostilled – which means notarized in an internationally-recognized manner by the government. Now, this was the sticking point.
To apostille your documents, take them to a solicitor. They’ll notarize them. Then you mail them off to the Foreign Office. Who will then return them with a rejection but not tell you what you did wrong. Repeat for three weeks until you’re at risk of losing the job you need these for and you’re all but accusing your lawyers of incompetence. Get the lawyers to contact the Foreign Office, do it right and then finally receive your apostille. Hurray. Now, all you need is a visa.
Now, visa requirements obviously vary from country to country. When you’re working TEFL it often makes more sense to enter the country on a tourist visa, arrange a job and then get a longer-term visa while you’re actually in-country. I was going to Korea, where that doesn’t really fly as well. But they do have specific visas for language teachers – one year, working and living. To arrange for that, send your apostilled documents, passport and job contract to the Korean embassy. Contact them several times and say that you intend to physically collect your visa. Turn up to collect them, be told they were mailed back to you in spite of your requests. Have a little cry. Have a fantastic sister lurk at the mailbox, grab your passport when it arrives and get the train to deliver it to you at zero notice. Spend a year evangelizing her band in thanks.
Get on a plane. Sit down for sixteen hours until you’re unsure if you have limbs, then disembark on another continent. Arrive at a tiny, pink bedroom and learn Koreans don’t have the same gender/colour values as the West.
Then get to work. If you’re lucky, you might have come in time to adjust to jet-lag on the weekend. But more likely you’ll be told to come to the school at get to work as soon as possible.
And that’s how to get a job in another country.
Oh Bloggery! 