5 Top Tips for Your Overseas Teaching Contract

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 international 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.

Overseas Teaching Contracts

Benefits of Signing up with an International Teaching Job Fair Organisation

The benefits of signing up with an international teaching job fair organisation may not be immediately apparent and you may balk at the cost of registration and the cost of attending the fair itself (transport, accomodation, time off work), but the benefits can often far outweigh the cost...

1. Often the schools who are invited to attend an international school recruiting fair are pre-selected by the fair organiser. You can often feel somewhat reassured that the schools have been vetted prior to your interview and subsequent hiring.

2. Many international teaching job fair organisers require schools to complete a questionnaire that will give you information that you may not find on their website and it's not appropriate to ask about at interview - the benefits package for example, or the number of local students in the school. The information in this questionnaire is usually made accessible to candidates through an online database, so international teachers can search for countries or vacancies they are interested in. You can access this information and contact schools that interest you, without having to actually attend the job fair.

Access to this information can give you an edge over other candidates because you will know more about the school and can contact recruiters with prior knowledge.

3. When you attend the job fair you will have access to people who are already teaching overseas and may know about teaching at the very schools which interest you. Take the time to talk to the other candidates, find out where they are from and where they are going. You'll be amazed at what you can learn about the different international schools.

Learn more about international teaching job fair organisers...

The job fair organisers also vet the overseas teacher candidates. If you aren't accepted to attend a job fair it does not mean you are not a desirable candidate. There are alternative job hunting strategies you can use to find a teaching job abroad.

Learn how you can land your own teaching job abroad using my proven strategies and job hunting techniques.

Teaching Overseas - signing up with a job fair organiser even if you don't attend their fair...

If you're looking for a teaching job overseas then you've probably checked out the international teaching job fair organisers...

There are a number of international teacher recruitment fairs held around the globe, but they may not be convenient to you, so you may have decided not to sign up with any of them.

This is a mistake!

Many international schools looking to employ overseas teachers list their jobs with these job fair organisers - and registering with them means you get access to these listings in a searchable database!

With the various ways technology allows you to communicate remotely with potential employers around the world, you are cutting your own throat if you do not register with one of these organisations.

Teaching jobs overseas are easier to get when you approach you job hunt with insider information - Get your copy of the Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School Right Now!

If you haven't come across these organisations yet... here are some links to get you started:

Search-Associates

The International Educator

Council of International Schools

Interviews for Teaching Jobs Overseas at International Teaching Job Fairs

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 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.

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.