Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Looking to Teach Abroad? Don't Work Alone.
Find a Recruiter to Work for You & With You
Recruiters work for us and with us when we are exploring new career opportunities. Their role is no different in the international education arena.
Their business depends on you.
Scan the international teaching advertisements on the Internet. Make note of the firm and the contact person. Avoid applying for job advertisements. You want to stand out and first impressions come from a connection and not, through an application process.
Never be an applicant, but rather a person they will invest time to understand you, your goals and career plan.
Do your research and explore the rooster of international recruiters. Email the recruiters and ask to speak to them via telephone, Skype, or another other social media channel, which brings the world into our backyard and make communication easier. There are no excuses for them not to reach out and make connection. They should set aside 15 to 30 minutes of their time to speak to you. If they cannot, move onto the next recruiter as it surely is a sign they are not willing to work for you.
Have a set of interview questions to ask them and evaluate their abilities to encourage and protect your interests as you explore options to teach abroad. The recruiter needs to project confidence in their ability to safeguard a positive and transition as you consider an expat life. Be reflective on these questions, and the responses they provide as the decision you make as to who you will work with could be for only a few months, a school year, or the beginning of a positive working relationship build on trust and respect which last the next decade or your entire career.
Here’s a set of general questions to ask, which focuses on the recruiter’s ability to provide advice, mentor or coach and advocate as well as mediate, if needed. Give thought as to what is important to you – as the decision is yours to work with them as much as it is their decision to work with you. Make the decision a good one. Your life depends on it.
Are they able to:
- provide insight on at least three of your country selections to work?
- provide feedback to your resume to refine it for greater marketability of your skills and experience?
- mentor you with encouragement, words of advice, or recommend next steps to help you reach your career goals? Have they asked you what your career goal for the next year, two or five years?
- coach you or give insight on the potential opportunity, the client, and the interview process?
- articulate your career goals?
- advocate to support your career goals?
- advocate to support you transition and relocation both in salary options, travel arrangements, settlement and transition support by employer?
- support you if wish to terminate the contract?
- support you to mediate with the employer for refine the support systems or address your issues?
- assist you both in coaching on settlement lessons, and help explore new opportunities?
It is not being an applicant from a job advertisement, it is about discussing your career goals, and how this recruiter is going to help you reach these goals. Keep in mind, if they are good, they will be honest, and advise you on your ability to attain these goals, and if you cannot, they should surely, offer some recommendation on how to build to your skill set for greater marketability. They should be realistic. They should be in contact with you with you regularly through the year, however, this working relationship is not one sided -- never think it is. The worth or value of the working relationship is based on a respect, time, a plan and communication.
Join us if you wish to discuss career goals. We are here to work with you, and for you. If you wish Tulip Canada to support your recruitment goals, join us. We will work together to achieve a common goal to educate with dedication, compassion and respect.
Lori Ann Comeau is a career coach for the education profession, founder and president of Tulip Canada, offering a boutique of recruitment services to support both the education community and the profession. Follow her on twitter at @tulipcanada or Facebook.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
First Impressions
Recruiters are the first step in the interview process. Offering a positive, welcoming and respectful presentation of ourselves makes it easier to evaluate both skills and personality. It’s the personality, which is the key indicator and selling feature to secure an international teaching position. Of course, qualifications are important, however if you don’t have the right personality (warm, flexible, respectful and open) to make a transition, it would be a poor investment choice for any employer. Make the impression last – and make it a good one.
Each of us should strive for higher standards and more specifically, a high level of service from the recruiters who we wish to work with as we explore new options in our career. It is about loyalty. Loyalty goes both ways in the working relationships between recruiter and applicant -- candidate or member if the firm takes the role that we are working together on the same team. When we go abroad on these adventures we surely want a recruiter to work for us. There should be some assessment on the safety of the environment, and most of all, they are able to evaluate our ability to thrive in our career development. As explorers of new teaching adventures, we should have expectations a recruiter is going to advocate for us be it – our rights as individuals, salary, benefits, housing, family needs and transition support.
Avoid applying for jobs for the sake of applying for jobs. Interview the recruiter and determine if they will be able to support you in your next career adventure. If the reward for service is to sell you in the international education community, than be sure your career goals and needs are communicated, and the recruiter is working for you.
Candidates should never pay their travel expenses to attend an interview, nor should they wait over three hundred minutes pass their scheduled interview time in a crowded room. It’s disrespectful. Personally, if I am unwilling to accept such poor treatment in the interview process I would not recommend any of Tulip Canada’s members to accept such disrespect. However, the advocacy struggle is, the empowerment of choice. We all have to decide our level of tolerance on the disrespect scale.
There should be an expectation to protect our educators who wish to teach internationally. We may be working with clients who do not adhere to the labour standards and human rights in our homelands, however it does not excuse us from the responsibility to serve our candidates well nor help our clients adapt best practices to support the most valued resource – employees in satisfaction, retention and program delivery.
Recruiters should be able to guide their clients both in selling themselves well and delivering a recruitment strategy, which is timely and fair, both in its accessibility, and evaluation. They are being interview by their candidates and if they are not being interviewed be assured they are being evaluated when the teacher lands, and begins their transition in their new work environment. Again, make the impression last – and make it a good one.
Tulip Canada is honoured to represent educators from across the global, and for us, it is the embrace of their strengths both in their qualifications and experience but also, their personality. They have the ability to manage life -- its challenges with humour and grace. They are committed educators, teachers and administrators. We are working together on their career adventure with encouragement and admiration.
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