Teaching Jobs Abroad - choosing your referees and getting recommendation letters

When you're applying for a teaching job abroad, you have to have a killer application pack to sell yourself to the international school recruiter as being the best possible choice to fill the post they've got.

A big part of your teaching application pack is your referees and recommendation letters.

Some experts on resumes recommend that you do not include referees in your resume. I disagree and have never followed this advice. I always line up my referees prior to sending out my resume and get their permission to include their contact details at the bottom.

Why do I flout the advice of the experts? I don't think a recruiter who has over 100 resumes to read is at all interested in contacting me again in order to get the contact details of my referees.

My intention is that my resume will interest them to the point of wanting to know more about me... and that they should be able to do so easily and with the least amount of effort on their part. And so I provide the contact details of my referees at the bottom of my resume.

You should identify and include three referees. Not all recruiters will require three referees, but I have run across a number of recruitment services and international schools that do, so be prepared with three.

One of your referees must be your current or most recent head teacher/principal. The recruitment services that run the international teaching job fairs require one of your referees to be your current head teacher/principal. The other two could be any person that has a professional relationship with you.

Once you've identified who you wish to be your referees, you will need to approach them and ask their permission.

At this point you can also request that they write a recommendation letter for you too. Recommendation letters are like a window into your life for the recruiters. Through what your colleagues write about you the recruiter can get to know you a little.

The recommendations you get from your colleagues are pivotal. They must be of excellent quality and really show off your good points.

I've got some awesome recommendation letters by giving my referees a writing frame to help them. They appreciated the structure and I got great letters, a win-win situation.

Check out these recommendation letter writing frames...