Job Discussion Forums

[themeepsong]

I'm considering moving to Chile, so I have a few questions.

First, a few details about myself;

I have a BA in Communications Studies, a TEFL certificate, a post-graduate degree in TESOL and 5 years of ESL teaching experience in Korea(both corporate and elementary).

1. Will it be difficult to find a University or College job with my credentials?

2. What kind of salary should expect if I got a job at an international school or a uni/college

3. Would my Korean wife be able to find any work? Her English isn't perfect, but she has teaching experience and a TEFL certificate.

Thanks.

sorry to be such a newbie

[Dia]

I dont actually have a lot of input or knowledge for your situation but since nobody has replied I thought I might throw in a few comments...

With many schools the visa issue tends to be a factor as well as the qualifications, so that at times makes the job search less "easy", even for people with lots of experience. However, I would expect that certain places would go much further out of their way or be accustomed to helping teachers that have a good background.

I am not very knowledgeable about the salary issue, most teachers I know work at institutes and are paid by the hour. However, one tidbit I learned about some major universities was that classes were still paid by the hour, and hourly wage was dependent on education. (with a bachelors degree pay was slightly above or average of an hourly teaching wage in institutes... at least in this case.)

Also, I have met many English teachers that arent native speakers. However, as one of the main advantages of hiring TEFL instructors is often pronunciation and instinct, I would assume institutes would be more picky about hiring her and she should expect to take some tests and have more intensive interviews.

Anyway, all of these comments are just opinions and observations, hopefully some people with more direct experience will come across this later...
good luck

[mike30]

I think that you'd find that you were more than qualified to work at a university in Chile, but the difficulty would be in actually finding a job. You'd most likely have to really pound the pavement and walk into schools and introduce yourself directly to the English Department, securing a job before you arrived to Chile probably wouldn't happen.

I am not sure about the salary, but you can pretty much count on a meager salary wherever you're working in Chile. Especially coming from Korea....we lived in Korea, and then taught in Vietnam and Chile, and now we're back in Korea because the pay and benefits here (especially at Universities) absolutely blow Chile out of the water. There are no sweet uni jobs there with 4-5 months paid vacation like you can get in Korea.

In Chile my girlfriend worked at a public school and made about $1400US/month and that was considered a VERY good job. So I would imagine that even the best jobs wouldn't pay more than $2000/month. I worked as an independent contractor and did OK. Most months I made $2500 or so...but of course there was no paid time off and cancelled classes usually meant that I wasn't paid for them. And it took me 5 months to make the contacts to set up enough courses to make that much. But at the end of the day I think that working for yourself is the only way to make any decent money in Chile teaching English.

Of course you don't want to compare apples to oranges, but most language institute teachers are making less than $1000/month in Chile pre-tax, and unlike Korea your apartment and bills are fully your responsibility....at any rate, I am sure that you are aware of the pay cut coming to South America from Korea, but in our experience it wasn't worth it. I'd recommend working another year in Korea, saving up 15 million won, and then just travel South America for a year without having to work at all! The best part of South America is all of the amazing places to travel to.

About your wife....I think that she'd have a hard time finding a "job" job teaching Chileans, but there is a large Korean community in Santiago so I think that she'd be able to get a lot of work doing private lessons, or setting up group classes for Koreans.