By Kelly Blackwell

Teaching abroad is a fantastic opportunity to explore the world, teach well-behaved students and earn a generous and often tax-free salary. But it is not all a bed of roses, there are some drawbacks. One major drawback is being so far away from family if something goes wrong. However, this concern should not stop you from moving your teaching career abroad. There are some steps you can take to manage the distance.

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Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, you can manage the distance by choosing where to work. By this, I mean you should look into cities where you can get to and from on direct flights that are scheduled at least several days each week. You can use any internet travel website to find this information, I usually use Expedia.com. With direct flights you will get home more quickly and not have to worry about making connecting flights. If you cannot get a direct flight to the city/town where your family is located, make sure you can get a direct flight to a city in your home country that has regular connecting flights to your hometown or ultimate destination.

Secondly you can look into the details of your teaching contract. Many international schools recognise that teachers working abroad may have to rush home when family members become ill, and build flights and/or time off into their employment contracts. When hunting for a teaching job abroad you can add this to the criteria you test teaching contracts against to aid your decision making process. This is not something you would ask about up front at the interview, but once you are offered a teaching position you can request a copy of the employment contract to examine.

Thirdly, you can establish an emergency fund. I have had an emergency fund since I started travelling and working abroad more than 12 years ago. My emergency fund has enough money in it to fly me home from wherever I am on a full fare flight and back again when the crisis that sent me home is resolved. The money is in a bank account that does not earn a lot of interest but it is immediately available, which is the whole reason for its existence.

In the 12 years I have been abroad I have never had to touch my emergency fund, and I hope it stays that way, but it gives me great peace of mind to know that should anything happen that would cause me to rush home I do not have to worry about whether I can afford it, or how I will pay off my credit card later, the money is already there.

Having money to get home by myself also means that I am not limited to only going home under the circumstances under which my employer will fund the trip. For example, the international school for which I currently work only covers emergencies involving immediate family members, so problems with grandparents, cousins or best friends are not covered. However, most employers will give you unpaid leave for emergencies with more distant relatives even if they will not pay for the flights. Funding your own flights is not a problem if you have planned ahead.

I know that having an emergency fund to get home has also given my parents peace of mind as well. They know that if anything should happen to a member of our family, they can call me home without putting any stress on my finances.

With modern technology and transportation it is not hard to stay in touch with loved ones at home, do not use that as an excuse to hold yourself back from a teaching career abroad!

About the Author

Learn more techniques and strategies to successfully land your own teaching job abroad with Kelly’s Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School!

By Kelly Blackwell

Are you facing a personal financial crisis that seems endless and unsolvable? Find a teaching job abroad and go from the bottom of the financial food chain to the top.

When you are struggling to make ends meet a radical change in your life is called for. It is a fact that teachers are not well paid, but international teachers working in international schools receive good salaries and most positions come with an expatriate benefits package.

An expatriate package for an international teacher can include a yearly flight home, housing, utility contribution, health insurance (with pre-existing conditions covered), retirement contribution, contract completion bonus, and more. All of this adds up to money you do not have to spend from your salary.

Currently I save fifty percent of my salary without breaking a sweat or doing without the things I love. I know I save half because I am paid 50% in the local currency and 50% in US dollars. I do not touch the US dollar portion of my salary except to send it home. Can you save half of your salary right now?

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Living in a developing country while earning an excellent salary for a developed country means that your money goes much further. In many developing countries things like groceries, household help, transportation, utilities, etc. are much more affordable than at home in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. You can maintain a high standard of living using only a fraction of your salary and have disposable income to save, pay of debt or travel.

If teaching in a developing country does not appeal to you, you can take this opportunity to teach in Europe or the UK where you will be paid in a currency that is holding its value well in the global financial meltdown of 07-08. What European and British schools do not offer in expatriate benefits is compensated with the strength of the Euro and the Pound.

With current technology it is easy to manage your financial life over the internet using secure websites provided by your financial institution. Sending money between countries is as easy as pressing a button or completing a form at your local bank. You can even use Skype to call your bank’s customer service desk at home for next to nothing.

In addition to relieving your financial burden, securing a teaching position overseas will enable you to explore new cultures, teach children who are eager to learn and provide an excellent private education for your children.

I do not teach abroad for the financial benefits, but because of the experiences teaching abroad offers me. I have travelled extensively throughout Asia, most recently spending the summer in China right before the Olympics. I’ve also spent a great deal of time travelling around the UK and Europe. Additionally, I enjoy teaching students who want to learn, who are respectful and who have parents that are supportive.

The only downside I can see is that my friendships span the globe and that makes it difficult to meet up with people as often as I would like. On the other hand, I have many people to visit with when I travel!

There are over 4000 international schools worldwide and if you have a teaching qualification and 2 years experience then you are eligible to teach abroad.

About the Author

Do you want to know how you can land yourself a teaching job abroad so that you can put an end to your financial problems? Land your own lucrative teaching job abroad with Kelly’s proven strategies!

By Kelly Blackwell

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the meat and potatoes of businesses hoping to make it on the internet, but did you realise that SEO can also be the key to wildly increasing the number of international school recruiters who see your eResume?

Let’s face it, the reality of job-hunting in the 21st Century is that digital is the way to go… We search for jobs online, we submit our resumes online, are interviewed via Skype over the internet and accept contracts that are delivered electronically too.

In this article I want to clue you in to a little known technique that is crucial when you are submitting your resume to a website or an electronic database, use keywords. Simple isn’t it? But very few of your competitors know about this, and that’s to your direct benefit because optimising your resume for the search terms recruiters will be using to find you will put your resume smack in the middle of their desk.

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Here’s what to do:

Include specific education related nouns in your resume because keywords are noun-based. Some examples are: classroom management, curriculum design, student motivation, student assessment, student organisation, class project, extra curricular activity.

Include specific subject related nouns in your resume.

Include qualification specific nouns in your resume.

Include experience specific nouns in your resume. Some examples are: GCSE teaching experience, examination board marking, moderating experience. Remember to include terms that would be of interest to a British, American or IB school if that’s where you experience lies or that’s where you want to go.

Look at job descriptions and job advertisements for ideas of keywords. Imagine that you’re the recruiter and make a list of keywords you’d use when searching a database for someone with your qualifications.

Attempt to position these keywords towards the top of your resume.

Here’s what not to do:

Lose sight of the fact that you’re preparing your resume to attract the interest of a human being. Check that your resume is attractive, well-laid out and reads well.

Over use any single keyword or phrase as this can result in that keyword or phrase being disregarded.

The pros and cons of posting your resume online:

At the end of the day, international recruiters are busy people who don’t spend hours trawling the internet in an attempt to find staff. Therefore, submitting your resume to resume bulletin boards is going to be a waste of time.

So why go to the effort of optimising your resume for online use? There are a number of industry specific websites on the internet where international school vacancies are posted. If you submit your resume to these sites, there’s a reasonable chance that recruiters may run a quick search when they’re posting the job adverts, provided the advertisement is not being posted by a personal assistant. And so, submitting an optimised resume will pay off in this situation.

Also, one of the services the international teaching job fair organisers offer schools’ recruiters is the ability to search a database of candidates’ resumes. To search the databases the recruiters enter subject specific, qualification specific and, experience specific keywords.

At the very least this exercise will result in you identifying areas in your experience and qualifications that will attract recruiters. You can then use these either when you optimise you resume ready to post online, or you can use them when you write your cover letter to catch the eye of recruiters who ’skim’ the majority of cover letters prior to deleting them.

Good luck on your job-hunt!

About the Author

Kelly’s been teaching overseas for more than a decade and has many proven, effective strategies for getting her resume read by international recruiters! Get your copy of Kelly’s interview with a veteran international school recruiter and utilise his foolproof secret strategies to dominate your competition!

By Kelly Blackwell

When you are getting serious about landing a teaching job abroad you need to consider how you are going to do it. Are you going to register with a international teaching job fair organiser like Search-Associates? Are you going to register with The International Educator (TIE) and get international teaching job alerts emailed to you daily? Are you going to trawl the internet for vacancies?

Whichever strategy or combination of strategies you choose to implement you will need to write an effective cover letter that sells you as the ideal candidate.

A great cover letter draws the recruiter in and leads them through your information and inspires them to look at your resume. It introduces you, outlines your experience and states why you are the best candidate for their position.

When writing your cover letter keep these suggestions in mind and you will increase the effectiveness of your letter:

Differentiate

While most recruiters are clued up enough to know that you are probably applying to more than just their international school, it is not good practice to make it obvious. When you write your cover letter you should include a sentence or two about why you want to teach at their school. Reasons you may include are; you have experience in the curricula offered, your children have experience in the curricula offered, you like teaching in small (big, single sex, co-ed) schools, or you have heard positive things about the school from other international teachers.

When you are differentiating you letter, address it to the recruiter if you can find their name on the website or from the advertisement and include the name of the school and location. These small, easy to implement ideas are the key to making each recruiter feel special and show them that you are interested in a job at ‘their’ school.

Be Selective and Adjust Accordingly

If you are job hunting as a teaching couple you need to have a couple of cover letters, or have paragraphs that you can cut and paste to make sure it is targeted. As a teaching couple you will ideally want to get a job at a school that has vacancies in your main teaching subjects. However, you may not be so lucky.

Teaching couples should lead with the strongest candidate and emphasise the experience and flexibility of the other teacher. For example, if you are a teaching couple with secondary maths and an elementary generalist you can apply for schools with openings in either of these areas. For an international school with a vacancy in the elementary school you would outline this person’s experience first and then you would discuss the maths teacher’s experience both in maths, in leadership, in extra curricula activities, etc. And vice versa if you find a school that has a maths vacancy.

Often school recruiters will do some ‘creative shuffling’ if they find a teaching couple they think will suit the school especially well.

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Short is Best

Keep your cover letter short; leave it to the other sections of your application pack to detail your education, experience and philosophy. The function of the cover letter is to provide a brief introduction of yourself and enough information to motivate the international school recruiter to read your resume.

If you have heard of the PowerPoint rule of 6 points per slide, 6 words per point then you will find this rule easy to understand and work with:

3-4 paragraphs, 2-3 sentences per paragraph.

If you are submitting your application by email, it needs to be even shorter because we have a lower tolerance for reading on a computer screen.

Here are just three ideas for making your cover letter more effective. Even if you have a cover letter already prepared, dig it out and check that it meets these criteria, you may be surprised at how more likely a recruiter is to read your resume if you follow these suggestions.

About the Author

There Are Over 4000 International Schools Worldwide, Get The Insider Secrets To Landing A Teaching Job Abroad Today! Get your free copy of Kelly’s free report, Escape the RatRace – TeachOverseas available exclusively from TeachOverseas.info

By Kelly Blackwell

Attending a teaching abroad job fair can be a nerve wracking experience, especially if you have not received any responses from the international school recruiters to your pre-fair approaches. Here’s how it really works…

You will be surprised at the number of teaching job interviews you will be invited to attend at an international recruitment job fair. You may be worried because you have sent out your resume 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 only automated responses.

Trust me, this is not a problem!

You will probably find that when you arrive for the orientation session and check your mailbox that you have received a number of interview invitations from those very same recruiters that have not sent you a personal response to your initial attempts to make contact.

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One colleague of mine said she received interview invitations from 26 schools at the last job fair she attended. Another reported that she’d spent hours sending out her resume to different international school recruiters and received a very disappointing response pre-job fair; however she also received an astounding number of interview requests at the job fair.

So, what does this mean to you? You will need to be prepared with a mechanism to quickly and easily turn down interview requests because the chances are you will be invited to interview with schools that you have no interest in teaching 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 in the blanks on the refusal letter and either pass it on to the recruiters at the sign up session 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 application packs to take with you to the teaching job fair you simply prepare and print some copies 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 she received interview invitations from 26 schools, of which she was only interested in two! What do you do then? You will have to resort to hand-written notes.

Another option is to take along a pad of Post-It notes. Post-It notes can be stuck to hotel room doors or on to the recruiter’s table at the sign-up session. A bonus to using this method is that your note will not be accidentally mixed in among other papers because it is both sticky and colourful.

Before you turn down interview requests you need to consider how much practice you have had recently with job interviews. Do you feel confident? Going to job interviews with schools you are not very interested in teaching for will give you an opportunity to practise rusty interview technique in preparation for the schools you really are interested in. Additionally, through interviewing with these recruiters you may discover that an international school you were not very interested in is actually the perfect place for you to move to.

About the Author

Kelly has been teaching abroad for 12 years now, and has refined her job fair strategies so that she always lands a high-paying, desirable teaching job abroad.

By Kelly Blackwell

Where is the best place to teach overseas? It is hard to decide where to go when you look at the scope of unique and exciting experiences that are available in the different regions around the world. This article is designed to give you information regarding the way your decision about where to teach overseas can affect your lifestyle while you are teaching abroad.

Leisure Activities Choosing the best place to teach overseas may be tied up in the kinds of things you like to do outside of work. You can continue many of your favorite leisure activities while you teach overseas, or take up new ones. Many international teachers move to regions that allow them to indulge themselves in this way.

If you ski, then Europe and Korea are options you may consider. You can teach in Vienna for example and take a train to the slopes for the weekend.

Divers tend to look for international schools in Thailand or the Philippines. Thailand currently has many more international schools than the Philippines, so you are more likely to find a teaching job there.

Because most international schools are situated in urban or suburban areas, there is usually a wealth of activities you can take part in. While living in Bangkok I have attended Indian musical evenings organized by the Indian Embassy, attended numerous balls, learnt how to ride a horse and taken numerous dancing lessons in many different styles. My colleagues are more adventurous than I, they run in marathons, compete in triathlons, mountain bike, dive, play golf, and the list goes on.

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To find out if you will be able to continue your hobbies in different countries you can search on the internet or check out the ‘activities’ section of the relevant Lonely Planet Guide.

Making Friends At home you probably have many friends outside of work, this can be difficult to achieve when working at an international school, especially if you frequently move around to different schools.

One key ingredient to making friends with local people can be how much effort you are willing to put into overcoming the language barrier. Learning the local language will also help smooth your life in your host country.

To avoid this issue you can choose to work at an international school in a country where the majority of the population speaks English! In many countries in Western Europe, for example, a large proportion of the population speaks English fluently, so the language barrier is practically nonexistent.

To make friends who are expatriates but not teachers you can join groups like the Hash House Harriers (who organize group runs) and national groups like the New Zealand Society.

Domestic Help Teachers with children that are looking to teach in a country with a lower cost of living than at home will discover that the lower cost of living also carries across into the cost of child care too, particularly in-home child care.

When you teach abroad you can choose to live and work in a country where you will be able to afford a nanny. Many international teachers with children employ nannies, especially in South East Asia where the cost of living is very low, and as a consequence, local salaries are low too.

Even teachers without children can enjoy the benefits of domestic help in countries where domestic helpers are relatively cheap to employ. Nearly all of my colleagues have maids or cleaners who come in and take care of everything from cleaning the apartment to doing the food shopping and collecting dry cleaning.

Finally There are many different factors to consider when you are deciding where the best place to teach overseas is for you. But the main thing to keep in mind is that while you may have a wish list of where you want to go and what you want to be able to do once you get there – it may not work out the way you planned.

For example, there may be no teaching vacancies in your specialty in the country of your choice in the year in which you are applying. Or, there may be schools very interested in employing you but not in the region you were hoping for.

The key to being happy and fulfilled when you are teaching abroad is flexibility and a commitment to making it work for you. It is not going to be just like home, you will face challenges, and that is the best part of teaching overseas, no matter where you decide to go!

About the Author

For more detailed information about Where is the Best Place to Teach Overseas get Kelly’s Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School – now completely revised for 2008!

“Escape the Rat Race – Teach Overseas” available FREE!

By Kelly Blackwell

When looking for the best paid overseas teaching job it is easy to be blinded by the salary being offered but this may prevent you from making the best choice if saving money is your primary concern. Here are two tips to help you find the highest paying teaching job abroad – net.

Teaching jobs abroad come in many shapes and sizes. You can teach English in private language schools, teach at universities set up for local students from the host countries and, you can teach at international schools which are set up for expatriate children.

The most lucrative position is usually teaching at an international school for expatriate children. There are over 4000 international schools worldwide so there is plenty from which to choose.

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Salary and Benefits

When considering a teaching position abroad it is important that you consider the overall package rather than simply the salary offered. This is what makes an international school teaching job the best paid teaching position abroad.

Some benefits offered by many international schools that can add to the overall package are:

* flights paid from your home to the school’s location at the beginning and end of your contract. Depending on how far your home is from the school, this benefit alone can save you several thousand dollars.

* housing allowance. Often international schools will pay you a monthly housing allowance, or even provide accommodation for you in an apartment or a housing complex. When you are offered a housing allowance you can usually find yourself adequate housing for the amount you are paid, and sometimes you can even end up with a surplus.

* end-of-contract bonus. International schools want you to remain for the full length of your contract and are willing to give you a financial incentive to do so. You may be able to negotiate an end-of-contract bonus of 10-15%.

Income Tax

Another consideration when considering teaching positions abroad and attempting to evaluate which one will be the most profitable is how much tax you will have to pay. Countries have the differing tax rules, for example in Taiwan you may only pay 10% tax, but in Poland you will have to pay closer to 20%. Therefore it is important to find out how much tax you will have to pay and establish how this will affect your overall take home salary.

Also, some benefits are taxable as well, so it is wise to check whether the dollar amounts you are quoted are gross (before tax) or net (after tax).

Finally on the subject of income tax, you should check with the tax department in your home country to establish what your tax commitment to them will be. Simply not living in your home country does not mean your government will not require you to pay tax there, for example, the government in Holland expects citizens who teach abroad to pay ‘wealth tax’ on any assets they leave behind.

This information is difficult to come by for most international schools in the initial stages of the recruitment process. Some international teacher job fair organisers require member schools to complete some of this information in their vacancy listings, but others do not. In order to ensure you have the required information to make the best decision possible before you sign a contract for a teaching job overseas, make up a set of interview questions that will cover this ground.

About the Author

For more detailed information on securing the best paid overseas teaching jobs get Kelly’s Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School – now completely revised for 2008!

“Escape the Rat Race – Teach Overseas” available FREE!

By Kelly Blackwell

Attending an international teaching job fair can be very stressful. Whether it is for your first teaching job overseas or your tenth, international job fairs can play havoc with your nerves. This stress can affect your ability to show your best side to recruiters, so eliminating it is a priority. One sure fire way to reduce or even remove the stress you feel is to have a backup plan.

Your backup plan can take many guises. Here are two that I have used successfully in the past to make attending overseas teaching recruitment events more bearable:

1. Plan to attend more than one overseas recruiting fair

There are more than ten job fairs each year that are dedicated to international school teacher recruitment, and you can apply to attend more than one per year. You can even attend more than one organized by the same recruiting agency.

Not every international school attends each fair. You can meet directors from many different international schools if you go to more than one job fair. One way to ensure that you get maximum exposure to recruiters is to apply to attend more than one fair.

The different job fair organizers; Search Associates, CIS and ISS have different schools recruiting with them, so mixing up your job fair registration and attending more than one job fair can increase your chances of finding the perfect overseas teaching position for you.

Many of the job fair organizers offer job fairs in the same locations back to back, so you can fly into Bangkok or London for example and attend two job fairs organized by two agencies in a single trip. Full details of the dates and locations of the job fairs organized by the three big organizers are available in The Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School.

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2. Know what your next move will be if you do not get offered an international teaching contract this academic year.

When I attended my first international teaching job fair I had two backup plans in the unlikely event that none of the school directors offered me a contract. I did not have to implement either of them, which is a shame in some ways, because my backup plans were almost as exciting as teaching abroad in an international school!

Here are some backup plans you may wish to explore…

> taking a year out and travelling around the world – you can find places you would like to live along the way and begin relationships with recruiters by visiting them at their schools.

> volunteering with an organization that teaches refugees or works with local teachers to improve methodology and pedagogy – this is an excellent way to gain international experience which will make you more attractive to international school recruiters.

> signing up with the Teachers on the Move, a company that finds temporary teachers for international schools to cover for maternity or long term sickness positions.

> applying for a teacher exchange program such as the JET program that places teachers in Japanese public schools, or the VIF program which places overseas trained teachers in American public schools.

Once you have made your decision to attend a job fair and received your invitation, you need to prepare for an intense two days in a pressure-cooker environment. Careful planning prior to the event and conscious networking at the event are the keys to landing a great teaching job abroad.

About the Author

There Are Over 4000 International Schools Worldwide, Get The Insider Secrets To Landing A Teaching Job Abroad Today! Get your free copy of Kelly’s free report, “Escape the RatRace – TeachOverseas” available exclusively from TeachOverseas.info

By Kelly Blackwell

In the 21st century much of our job hunt has moved online. International recruiters are often requiring us to submit our application packs by email, which certainly cuts down on the expense of postage and reduces our carbon emissions, but is it good for us as applicants? You know yourself how easy it is to delete email after email, often without even bothering to read them!

When you send in your application pack by email with all you documents attached, your goal is not only to get your email opened and read, you also want the recruiter to open your documents and read them too. So, how do you get your emails read? You use these crucially important tips to make the recruiter WANT to read your email!

1. Use a meaningful subject line.

I suggest you include the specific teaching position you are applying for and your name. By using this style of subject line you are immediately identifying it as an email from an applicant and the recruiter will expect to see a teacher application when they open the email. Also, this will make it easier for the recruiter to find your email in their inbox should they need to refer to it again.

2. Send your email messages in plain text.

Many email software does not recognise emails sent in .html format. For example, my email client strips all the code and pictures out of the body of my emails for security reasons. So, while these formats can spice up your email and make it look attractive, this will work against you if the code pops up in the recruiters email client. Keep it simple and make sure your email is sent out in plain text. Any pictures you want to send should either be left out or attached separately.

3. Avoid using emoticons.

While those little winks and smiles are cute and useful in conveying non-verbal communication clues in personal emails, they have no place in a business email.

4. Write formally, without contractions or short cuts.

LOL, OTOH, and BTW are not appropriate in this setting, remember that you are sending a formal letter asking the recruiter to consider you for a teaching job in an international school. This may seem obvious, it certainly does to me, but I was shocked to receive an email recently from an individual that had ‘u’ instead of ‘you’. I was less than impressed.

5. Resist the temptation to tag it with a high priority tag.

What is a high priority to you may not be one to the recruiter, so tagging your application email as being ‘important’ will be a blot against you. This is an excellent way to send your email straight into the trash bin. The same goes with asking for the recruiter to send a receipt on delivery, resist the urge and trust that if you have followed these tips and have a killer application pack, then you will hear from the school.

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6. Keep your sentences short, one to two lines only.

Reading on a computer screen is hard on your eyes. It is a good idea to make it easy on the person reading your email by keeping the sentences and paragraphs short with a white space in between the paragraphs.

7. Use standard fonts and avoid unusual font colours.

Arial and Times New Roman are standard fonts that you can almost guarantee the recruiter will not only have on their computer, but that they will be used to reading them. A lot of our reading is done automatically by recognising word shapes. Using standard fonts can tap into this skill. We are also used to reading black text on a white background, so why would you use green or purple in your email to an international school recruiter?

8. SHOUTING at the recruiter is not going to make them want to employ you.

Using capitals in an email is bad etiquette. Not only is it commonly understood that you use capitals when you want to shout at someone, we don’t normally read in capitals, so you are just making it harder on the recruiter.

9. When it comes to attachments – small is better.

Many email clients restrict the size of the attachments allowed into people’s inboxes. While you want to attach the elements of your application pack to support you email, you also want to ensure that your email is delivered. The solution to this problem is to make sure your documents are concise and without images, not to zip them.

10. Correctly spelling names is critical.

Should you include the name of the recruiter, or the name of the international school; make sure you spell it correctly. Check and double check. You insult the school recruiter if you spell their name incorrectly; refer to them by the incorrect gender or by not doing your homework regarding where the school is or what it is called

That is my top 10 tips to remember when you send your teacher application to international school recruiters by email. They are critical to your recruitment campaign and can make the difference between landing that teaching job abroad, and having to stay where you are.

If you want to see the world, make tons of money and have a stress-free life get Kelly’s Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School, guaranteed to make your job-hunt a success! To get inside the mind of an international school recruiter and learn the secrets you must know in order to control the recruitment process and ensure a favourable result, get Secrets of a Veteran International School Recruiter Today

About the Author

If you want to see the world, make tons of money and have a stress-free life get Kelly’s Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School!

By Kelly Blackwell

You may be holding back form seriously seeking an overseas teaching contract because you are afraid of getting trapped abroad. This rarely happens. When teaching abroad you will be expected to sign an employment contract covering 1-2 years and in return you will receive a plethora of benefits and the unique experiences the come with working abroad. But this does not mean you are powerless to end the contract early if some unexpected catastrophe should occur.

Breaking your contract (leaving the school before the contractual period runs out) should only be done as a last resort because it can seriously hinder your efforts to land another teaching job abroad. The community of international teachers is a very small one and word will spread if you break your contract without a good reason.

Most international school directors are reasonable people who are experienced international teachers and recognise that there are occasionally circumstances that force you to break contract.

Such circumstances may include:

* A critical change in the political situation in the host country which changes the level of safety for foreign workers.

* The health status of a close relative at home or one of your dependents changes and you need to go home.

In these circumstances your best course of action is to approach the school’s director and discuss your options. By approaching the director and negotiating a timeline for your departure you will preserve your reputation as a good employee and receive a good reference. Most likely you will be expected to work out a period of notice in line with the country’s employment laws and you are likely to lose your bonus and repatriation benefits.

Here’s how to make the right choices to protect yourself when signing an employment contract for a teaching job abroad.

* Make sure that you receive a contract which states in writing all the employment conditions and benefits you and the recruiter agreed upon during the interview. Do not accept a verbal assurance because there is no come-back if the recruiter does not deliver. If the contract you receive misses out some part of the conditions and benefits you thought you had agreed upon, send it back to have them added.

* Make sure that you have a copy of your overseas teaching contract that it is signed by both yourself and the school’s representative.

* Keep a copy of your contract handy so that you can refer to the conditions written down whenever you have a question about your rights.

* Talk to people at the international teaching job fair (if you are attending one), to establish the school’s reputation as an employer. While you are checking out the school’s reputation, check out the administration staff’s reputation too. Sometimes a great school can be destroyed by a bad administrator.

* Find out about employment laws in the school’s host country and how they affect your employment contract. When you sign an overseas teaching contract you are not signing away your rights for the duration of the contract and it is important to remember this. You do not become an indentured servant. Most countries have employment laws covering how many days notice you must give your employer in order to leave legally.

The important thing to always remember when you are seeking employment abroad is to get everything in writing and believe that the people you are working for are reasonable people. If you have doubts, then do not sign a contract with them!

About the Author

For detailed information on what contract conditions you should and should not accept in your overseas teaching contract get Kelly’s Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School – now completely revised for 2008! “Escape the Rat Race – Teach Overseas” available FREE!