Having a recruiter is definitely not a requirement for finding a teaching job in South Korea. Some people choose to not use a recruiter and directly apply to schools instead. It is completely up to you if you decide to forego a recruiter. For me though, having a recruiter was important. Recruiters possess a wealth of invaluable information that I would not have known had it not been for them.
Because I’ve never taught overseas before, I wanted to utilize a recruiter. I had no idea of where to even start. Sure, I could research by scouring Google, Reddit, YouTube (which I have done), but it was a little difficult to discern whether the information I was coming across was accurate and current (especially with how much everything has been altered due to the pandemic). My recruiters gave me interview preparation tips, gave me the list of documents I needed and how to properly gather them, and other information pertinent to my job seeking. Perhaps if this wasn’t my first time applying for a job in South Korea, I may have gone the direct applicant route. But the recruiters really helped to show me the ropes, so to speak.
Here are a couple of things I learned while working with recruiters:
• It’s probably best to use multiple recruiters. Different recruiters work with different schools, so what may not be available with one recruiter may be available with a different recruiter. I wanted to cast a wide net, so I worked with quite a few recruiters. They all had a variety of schools that they were working to get me interviews with.
• Let them know what you want. I was very upfront with my recruiters about what was important to me: location and hours. I wanted to be in Seoul and I wanted to have hours that wouldn’t have me out at all hours of the night. My recruiter found me just that. The more specific you are, however, the fewer opportunities might come your way.
I worked with quite a few recruiters but I will list the ones that I worked with and had the best experience with:
- Teach ESL Korea. This was the first recruiter I reached out to, back in April, just to gather information about preparing to come to South Korea. The information he gave me set me up for success when it came time to collect my documents. Within four weeks (from the time I started my hagwon search in October), he set me up with two job interviews that yielded two job offers (the second job I was offered was the one I accepted). There is a reason Teach ESL Korea works with a lot teachers: they are very good at what they do, which is getting teachers placed!
- Adventure Teaching. What I loved most about Adventure Teaching was how warm and welcoming they seemed in their correspondence. They set me up on one job interview and entertained my fifty-leven questions that I had on a regular basis.
- ESL Edustar. I really, really, really enjoyed working with my recruiter at ESL Edustar. He was kind, responsive, did a really good job at getting me interview opportunities, but I ultimately ended up deciding on the position I later accepted with Teach ESL Korea.
All three of these recruiters I would highly recommend to anyone job searching.
Some of the recruiters I found, I found through Dave’s ESL Cafe. Dave’s ESL Cafe is a job board for positions in South Korea and China. A lot of the positions on there aren’t necessarily the schools advertising, but rather recruiters advertising on their behalf. So you’re not always applying to the school, but rather the recruiter who will then decide if they will set up an interview for you.
This was my experience! If I remember more things, I’ll come back and edit this post to add those things.
🎶 🎧 🎶 now listening to: Jeebanoff—Thinkin’ bout
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