Job Discussion Forums

[MBee]

Hey everybody,

Do private universities like hiring candidates with CELTAs over those with the standard face-to-face 120 hour TEFL Certificates? Or do they view both as being equal? Does it impact your income to have one over the other?

And the private language schools/other types of schools? Do they like to see one more than the other, or pay more for one over the other?

Cok Tesekkurler, I really appreciate you taking the time and hope you're enjoying the evening wherever you are.

Ciao! (I'm in Italy)

[Qaaolchoura]

Private universities tend to prefer candidates with experience; certification is required mainly for WP purposes, and I've heard of cases where an experienced candidate without any certification were urged to get an online cert (mind you, this is hearsay). All universities are different, and it's possible that some prefer the CELTA. (Among the odder hiring preferences, I can think of one certain university which prefers candidate with an MA, any MA, no matter how unrelated. Master's in Art History? You're perfect for the job!)

That said, most uni positions I've seen say something like "CELTA or recognized equivalent," and even those that just say "CELTA" seem to be using it as a genericized trademark.

With private language schools, every single one I've interviewed with, there seems to be no preference for the CELTA, and teachers with a CELTA seem to be in the minority. It's possible that some of the ones who never respond to my emails have a preference for the CELTA but I'm inclined to doubt it. The main qualification for language schools seem to be: 1. sufficiently qualified to keep students from complaining, 2. as cheap to hire as possible 3. ideally (but optionally) with the qualifications necessary to get a work permit (though almost none of them will get you one), presumably just in case the government starts cracking down.

I'm less certain though about a certain recruiter for private primary/secondary schools (you need Turkish citizenship to work in public primaries/secondaries), which does seem to treat the CELTA, and CELTA alone, as equivalent to home-country public school teaching licensure, at least based on their ads. I have never tried this recruiter with my SIT TESOL cert, so I may be mis-reading.

If you're in a place you can take the CELTA conveniently, and don't have any certification, you might want to take it, however if you already have an equivalent 120 hour onsite course, it's almost certainly not worth your time to take the CELTA, unless you want to go for children/teenagers and the aforementioned recruiter (worth considering, since on average Turkish kids and teenagers are generally more pleasant to deal with than Turkish uni students) and even then I'd ask first.

Regards,
~Q

Edit: I've noticed from your other post that you have an unrelated MA and four years' unrelated teaching experience. As I said on the other thread; as long as you're not aiming for top-tier places, that may be more helpful than you expect, as least with universities.

[MBee]

Thank you so much for all this information, I really appreciate you taking the time to put this post together. This is really helpful!!