Job Discussion Forums

[G Cthulhu]

I've had <ahem> several people email me their SoP's over the last few weeks. If there's one piece of advice I would give to most of you it is this: tell JET what you will bring to the table for them, not what you're hoping to get out of it.

JET gets thousands of applications every year. They can be selective, and over the last few years have been getting very much so. The SoP is your single chance to stand out from everyone else applying and it's what is going to secure you the interview. To do that you need to tell them what you can offer. They don't, per se, care what you'll get out of it.

Lastly, don't be a fan boy or a creeper. Honestly, this shouldn't need saying, but writing about how you've (& I'm paraphrasing literally here) always had a fantasy about working in a Japanese school just like in the manga you read or the anime you watch is, at best, creepy. Read it out loud, and do it in a creeper voice: if it sounds bad/weird to you then it's going to read even worse to the reviewers!

Good luck, and I genuinely hope to see some of you at the interviews. Some of you have clearly got it together and come across well. Others... you need to do some work on the SoP! If you're in Denver for the interviews for the 2013 round, say hi.

[fat_chris]