Preparing to leave everything behind to embrace a new adventure overseas can be a bit daunting. There are so many moving parts, so much information to absorb about things that you didn’t even know you need to know. So I thought I would devote an entire blog post about everything you’ll want to get together while you’re job searching and preparing for your first interview. You can think of this as a quasi-timeline of some sorts. Actually this was my timeline 😊
September 2019. Wanting to get a fresh start by moving out of America and explore my love of teaching, I decided to consider my options. Ever since returning to the States after living in London for a year in July 2016, I knew it was only a matter of time
my Korean-English language exchange group
before I would want to leave America to live in another country. After doing a little researching, I saw that South Korea was a popular place for native English speakers to teach. This was a natural fit for me: I had already been learning the language from my Los Angeles Korean-English Language Exchange Meetup group, signed up for Korean language classes, and I was already enamored with the culture. So I began looking at requirements for teaching in South Korea. There wasn’t a long laundry list of things that what were required: pretty much just a Bachelor’s degree (which I already had) and a TEFL certification. Listed below are all of the things that I needed to apply for jobs and ultimately secure a position at my current hagwon.
1. TEFL Certification
A TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) certification is a requirement for pretty much any country where you will teach English as a foreign language. Being TEFL certified from an accredited institution shows potential employers that you’ve been trained to teach English as a foreign language. The certification includes 100 hours of coursework and at least 20 practicum hours. After speaking with a friend who taught in South Korea a few years ago, she recommended the International TEFL Academy (ITA). They were super, super helpful and I highly recommend them! They have a lot of resources available to help you get through your certification and assistance with job searching. They reviewed my resume and my contract and have always assisted me with any questions I had during this entire process. After contacting them, I signed up for their 12-week course that began in November 2019. Along with my coursework, I had to complete at least 20 practicum hours.
2. Practicum
This is where you get to apply your teaching training in a real life scenario. I had never formally taught before so this was really helpful for getting my feet wet. Twenty hours were required (although I did more) and you can achieve those hours through observation and actually teaching. There’s a minimum amount of hours that are required for you to actually teach–so you can’t spend your whole 20 hours observing. There’s a lot of different ways that you can get your practicum hours. I did mine through privately tutoring non-native English speakers and volunteering at my local YMCA for evening ESL classes. You can find practicum opportunities on online language tutoring platforms (like VIPKid, Gogokid, iTalki, Preply, etc.)*, observing other ESL/EFL teachers, and you can always find someone wanting to learn or improve their English on apps like HelloTalk (that’s how I found a few people to tutor). You don’t have to wait until you finish your coursework before you start working on your practicum. You can do your practicum concurrently with your coursework.
*=if you live in California, you can’t teach on the online language tutoring platforms because of the recent Independent Contractor laws that went into effect as of January 2020
3. Resume Preparation
As I was finishing up my practicum, I used the opportunity to update my resume. I sent my draft over to my ITA adviser who revised it so it would be good to go when I was ready to start applying. This is one of the first things I would recommend doing before contacting a recruiter because recruiters will want to have your resume.
4. Contacted a Recruiter
In April 2020, just shortly after receiving my TEFL certification, I contacted Dan from Teach ESL Korea (and it was through him that I got my teaching position!). During this time, I was able to get some information on the application process and he gave me a lot of great information. At this point, I wasn’t certain if I wanted to go the EPIK route or do the hagwon route. I ultimately chose to work in a hagwon because choosing my placement location was my priority. There wasn’t much that I could do at this point to secure a job since I was aiming to be in South Korea late 2020/early 2021 (and that was about 8 months away at the earliest. The advice I received was to really start actively pursuing working in hagwons about 4-5 months prior to when I would want to leave. But what I could do was start collecting the documents I needed so when it was time for my file to be active with my recruiter and I start interviewing for jobs, I would have everything I need (and having all of your documents ready at the time you interview is very beneficial). The first thing I did was get my transcripts.
5. Transcripts
Late April/early May 2020. I contacted the registrar at my university and ordered two official transcripts. It is imperative that you DO NOT open your sealed transcripts when you receive them. That was one of the things I’ve heard over and over again throughout this application process: don’t open your official transcripts!
6. Letters of Recommendation
I haven’t heard of any hagwons requiring letters of recommendation, but because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do EPIK (which opened up August 1 for Spring 2021 intake) or not, I went on and got my letters of recommendation, just to be on the safe side. If you’re doing EPIK, you will need two letters of recommendation, usually from someone who has worked with you in a professional environment (like a supervisor). You won’t be able to use a letter of recommendation from your TEFL instructor, as I later discovered. I wanted to give my letter writers as much time as possible so they didn’t feel pressured to write something at the last minute.
7. Notarized and apostilled diploma photocopy
Another important item you will need is your notarized and apostilled diploma photocopy. You will not want to use your original diploma because you will not get it back. This was the quickest thing for me to obtain. Because I live in Los Angeles, I was able to drive downtown to the Secretary of State department to get all this done. First, I went to a notary about 5 minute walk away from the Secretary of State building to get my diploma notarized. Once I got that, I went back to the Secretary of State to get my apostille. Altogether it took me about 45 minutes to do. If you don’t live close enough to your Secretary of State to walk in to do this, you can mail it in.
8. Apostilled FBI Background Check
I applied for my background check in August 2020. Getting the background check back and sending it off for the apostille took a total of 10 weeks, because you know, COVID. Timing is important when ordering your background check because it is only valid for 6 months. If it expires before you have a chance to file for your visa, then you will have to go through it allllllll over again. You’ll want to order your background check through an official FBI channeler. I used National Background Check, Inc. This took a couple of days to get it completed but there was an option to expedite it in 24 hours. They were easy to get in touch with and very helpful. You can find a list of official FBI channelers here: FBI.gov Official Channelers
After receiving my background check back, I got it apostilled by sending it to Apostille Courier Express who then sent it to the US State Department to be apostilled. It ended up taking 9 weeks for me to receive the apostilled background check back.
9. Research and Prepare
I know this point seems rather intuitive and I’m sure you already know you should do this, but I’m including it anyway. When you land your first interview, it is very likely your interview will be within 48 to 72 hours of first been notified of it. It’s also very likely you won’t have a whole lot of information about the school you’re going to be interviewing for. It’s a little unlike here in America. When you apply for a job in America, you can read all about what the position entails, salary, position qualification requirements and preferences right there on the job listing. Every interview request I received from my recruiters, I didn’t feel like I was getting a whole, whole, whole lot of information about the job itself. The information you would usually get is: the school name, salary, start date, age group, photos of the school, and what the school will provide (such as E2 Visa sponsorship, housing, airfare, etc.). After being notified of my job interviews, I would go to the school’s website to get a feel for what the school was about, and then I would check out Reddit and other forums with teachers that teach in Korea or recently accepted jobs there and get their experiences. I would also use these forums to ask questions. During this time I was also preparing answers to possible questions and coming up with about 8 questions that I could ask the interviewer (although I usually only asked 4 or 5). In a later post, I will cover potential questions you might be asked on your interview and some sample questions you can ask. So stay tuned!
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