Job Discussion Forums

[GEG]

I thought I saw this topic somewhere, but lost it, and I know I saw a posting about someone doing this, but lost it, so....

My goal is to teach English in a company in Europe. The teacher is the employee instead of the contractor. Is anyone doing this? If so, how did you make the transition? What were your first steps? I am a TEFL Certified teacher with many years of business experience as well as years of teaching business English (and the TOEIC, BEC exams) to adult students both in the classroom and at businesses through private language schools.

I don't have EU working papers and cannot get them, (family has been in US for 300 years) so many countries could be out from that standpoint. I would appreciate any advice should people have it. I have my thoughts/ideas on how to get into it, but I'd be curious to hear from others to see if I am on the right track. Many thanks in advance.

[spiral78]

Well, I know several people who are successfully doing this (but all have EU citizenship, which smooths the way considerably).

Your problem will be getting someone to sponsor you for a working visa. This may still be possible in some of the 'new' EU member countries, but unless you had highly specialist qualifications, very unlikely to find such a sponsor in any of Western Europe.

Further, it takes time to build a local reputation that will convince a company to pay an individual teacher for courses as versus an established language school. There are several reasons for this.

While it's cheaper for the company, they obviously need to write the classes as an expense on official tax documents, and, frankly, 'Berlitz' is less likely to be questioned than 'John Smith.'

Secondly, how do they know you will be reliable and teach at a reasonable degree of professionalism unless you have a strong local reputation and credentials.

Thirdly, you likely need local language skills to negotiate with company staff, understand contracts, and deal with local bureaucracy.

The more realistic route into this is to work for a language school for at least one year. They will sponsor your initial visa, you can start to make some local contacts and build a reputation, and you can try to begin building your own business in the second year.

My friends spent three to four years building reliable business. All have fluent local language skills.

It's possible, but tough.

[Marcoregano]

I agree with spiral78. Almost certainly you will need to have local knowledge and connections to pick up this kind of work. To begin with you need to get a regular teaching post in Europe, and as you're already aware, as a non-EU citizen that in itself isn't easy - but certainly not impossible. The only alternative I can think of would be to target big US companies that have subsidiary operations in Europe, and try and convince them that it's worth their while to use you as an English teacher in their European branch/es. But even then, it's almost certainly easier for them to hire locally and they probably use language school contracts.

[GEG]

many thanks for your replies, I am planning on going through the language school route, then maybe using contacts I make there to get in. I am also looking at multi-nationals (US based) because I know not being an EU citizen, it's VERY difficult for me to get working papers.

I'll keep pluggin.

THanks again