The negative interview mindset

Is it sometimes too easy to get a teaching job in Thailand?

A growing number of foreign teachers (particularly male) think that it's so easy to get an English teaching job in Thailand that all you have to do on interview day is turn up. Ajarn.com looks at a common mindset behind interviewing for TEFL jobs

The all important interview itself

How to perform well on the day

Interviews in Thailand seem to range from a Thai person simply checking to see if you have the right “look,” to more in-depth conversations between the candidate and one or two people responsible for hiring. I personally rarely spend less than an hour with a candidate for a job at my school, and often far longer.

Arranging an interview

Getting your foot in the door

Once an interview is scheduled, KEEP YOUR APPOINTMENT! You put yourself in a bad light by canceling an interview, or even changing the time, unless you give ample notice and have a very good reason for doing so. Changing your appointment time with a prospective employer even once is unadvisable; do it twice and you have effectively killed your candidacy.

Teaching scams

Legendary scams, blacklists and the midnight run

I tested my marketability and checked the options available. My recently acquired TEFL certificate definitely opened up new opportunities. University job offers poured in from China, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand.

Are you certified?

Finding your way through the TEFL course maze

Teaching was no longer challenging. I was stagnating. Sure, I could always shake my life up with a weekend of debauchery, an occasional fling with a sexy female expatriate, or by traveling to a different city – and, truth be told, I often tried combining all three. But, at my core, I knew that I wasn’t growing productively. As a teacher I wasn’t developing. My methodologies had become stale. I needed a new bag of tricks. I needed rejuvenation.

Career services corner

Help in finding a job

As the head of a well-regarded English program at a government school in Bangkok, Thailand for the last 1.5 years, I have been largely appalled by the thousands of resumes I have seen, e-mails I have received, and the lack of interviewing skills of most teacher candidates I speak to.

Ajarn lesson number one

The first steps to becoming a teacher

A teacher, me! Terror was my first reaction, yes I was used to handling million pound budgets and protecting the reputation of celebrities form the British tabloid, but teaching is such a responsibility!

Advice you can truly use

Don't listen to those barstool experts!

Having been warned-- or advised-- that appearance is very important here in Thailand, (just as important as Japan, Korea, or Taiwan I suppose), I set out on job interviews. Most of the advice for teachers on the Thailand websites struck me as either superficial or downright absurd.

Fresh off the boat

Newbies. Don't you just love 'em

I've seen it all before. We all have. These young, naive 20 something newbies, these walking erections with a backpack, who get off the airplane at Don Muang with nothing but a goofy grin and a 42 work vocabulary, and magically land that 40,000 Baht a month job te aching English, while the rest of us, with our credentials, our education, and our experience are left wondering where the good teaching jobs have gone.