Job Discussion Forums

[amisexy]

Hi,

I may be joining an International House school in the very near future and I had a few questions to ask on the IH Internal Transfer System.

How exactly does it work?
Are there lots of jobs available? What about in Western European countries?

Thanks

[Sashadroogie]

As far as I know, when you have joined one branch of the franchise and been working happily for most of your contract, you'll have a PDI (Personal Development Interview) with your DoS. This is basically an assessment of your performance throughout the year. Then, armed with this important document, you'll have the chance of applying to other IH branches throughout the world, using the IH website. Passwords etc. provided by IH admin. Existing IH teachers are offered jobs ahead of advertising them to outside teachers, making it fairly easy to move around from one IH school to the next.

However, local conditions apply, especially visa conditions. Western Europe will still be off the table for those of a non-EU persuasion, glowing PDI notwithstanding.

Good luck.

[spiral78]

To re-iterate what Sasha's said about the bottom line, IH is not an 'in' to Western Europe for non-EU passport holders.

To get someone a visa, the school has to argue to the national government of whatever Western European country that 'you' have some needed skill(s) which they cannot find among EU passport holder applicants for the position. With the many well-qualified UK/Irish teachers around, this isn't feasible in the EFL field.

The broader answer is that IH does have a variety of jobs going, though from what I understand there is some fairly serious competition for the more desirable locations worldwide.

I'll state here for the record that I have never worked for IH, but I did do a project for one of the Canadian branches last summer and asked some questions about employment prospects, so that's where I'm getting this info from, for what it's worth.

[amisexy]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'm a UK citizen, so the visa thing isn't important at all luckily.
It was more the level of competition I was wondering about, though I guessed it would be very high.
I was wondering about getting a job in say, Spain or Italy, where you would usually need to be on the ground from abroad using IHITS.

[Sashadroogie]

As far as I remember there are vacancies in these popular locations. However, as you guessed, the competition is really high and the conditions not very attractive. Yet, any vacancies that do come up have to be advertised on the internal transfer. Officially, that is. What the reality is, is anybody's guess.

In any case, good luck to you!

[spiral78]

I cannot speak to their European branches, but I know that the Canadian buzz was not to bother for the new Miami location - it was being stocked with hand-picked internal candidates.

Again, this is second-hand and last year's info - I had less-than-zero interest in working at IH or in Miami; just reporting what I was told by some of the Canadian IH long-termers.

[Sashadroogie]

What!!???!!! An IH branch not adhering to the rules and regulations?! This I find so very hard to believe!!! You must surely be mistaken, my dear Spiral!!!

[spiral78]

Perhaps my informants had been subverted

[Sashadroogie]

Turned? A possibility. Perhaps you need to take a leaf out of Uncle Joe's handbook and purge your network. Can never be too careful. May even turn up a mole.

[sharter]

Is it possible to live on an IH wage these days?

[spiral78]

Not in Canada
Never bothered to check it out elsewhere.