Site Search:
 
Speak Korean Now!
Teach English Abroad and Get Paid to see the World!
Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

So how competitive is the Korean esl market now?

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Job-related Discussion Forum
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
jibbelee



Joined: 14 Nov 2014

PostPosted: Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:55 am    Post subject: So how competitive is the Korean esl market now? Reply with quote

I thought I would have an easier time getting a job since I have a year of experience, but when I applied at one recruiter they told me kind the past four years schools have gotten more picky. Then I interviewed for one school and they told me they were interviewing six other people on that same day. (The school didn't seem that great as it was ten hour days) I had one other interview that I didn't get. And one recruiter told me to apply for Taiwan or China.

So... Should I start hedging my bets and start applying elsewhere? Like I said I thought it wouldn't be that hard to get in somewhere. I'm living outside Korea now. I was also asked how old I was in one interview, which 33, I don't know if that's making it difficult. It's only been a few weeks since I completed my paperwork but...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
S3raph1m



Joined: 06 Mar 2017

PostPosted: Fri Aug 03, 2018 8:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are so many jobs, dude. You’re fine. Make sure to tell recruiters you’ve got all the paperwork completed. If you don’t have a TEFL cert, get a cheap 120 hour online one in the meantime. Work with as many recruiters as possible (don’t tell them this though). You’ll get a job.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
isitts



Joined: 25 Dec 2008
Location: Korea

PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 5:27 pm    Post subject: Re: So how competitive is the Korean esl market now? Reply with quote

jibbelee wrote:
I thought I would have an easier time getting a job since I have a year of experience, but when I applied at one recruiter they told me kind the past four years schools have gotten more picky. Then I interviewed for one school and they told me they were interviewing six other people on that same day. (The school didn't seem that great as it was ten hour days) I had one other interview that I didn't get. And one recruiter told me to apply for Taiwan or China.

So... Should I start hedging my bets and start applying elsewhere? Like I said I thought it wouldn't be that hard to get in somewhere. I'm living outside Korea now. I was also asked how old I was in one interview, which 33, I don't know if that's making it difficult. It's only been a few weeks since I completed my paperwork but...

33 is not old...but the market is tighter here than it used to be. You mentioned you have one year of experience. Do you also have a TEFL certificate? And are you trying for hagwons or public schools? EPIK has applications available now for their spring 2019 intake.

For Taiwan, you can only do hagwons (buxibans) unless you are properly certified to teach in your home country. I had thought their market was shrinking due to a low birth rate.

China has a lot of opportunities. Starting salary might be lower if you don’t have much experience (though it depends where you apply) but cost of living is a lot lower. So, I wouldn’t rule it out.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
seamstressfortheband



Joined: 05 Sep 2013

PostPosted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What are your qualifications?

I'm early 30s too and I lived in Korea 2007-2010. Just been offered an adult teaching job that pays about 3.6 inc housing plus other allowances and 50days hol... I think it seems like a decent deal.

I have CELTA B and MATESOL. But I think the minimum requirement was just CELTA plus 2 years experience. China could be a good place to get the experience...seem to be a bit more in the way of options there! If you don't have the CELTA and plan on doing this for more than a few years, get it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wonkavite62



Joined: 17 Dec 2007
Location: Jeollanamdo, South Korea.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:29 am    Post subject: Nonsense Reply with quote

Hagwons and recruiters will make all sorts of excuses about you being too old, and not having the right accent or the right look. Sometimes, though this has as much to do with their silly prejudices, and their obsession with superficial characteristics than the EFL market.
For example, the one of older teachers in Seoul told me last year that in 2004, when he was about 34 years old, recruiters would tell him that they could only find jobs for people under 30. And in those days, EFL in Korea was booming.
And guess what-in the spring of this year my hagwon boss was complaining that there was a big shortage of western teachers. And this was only a few miles outside of Seoul!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
wonkavite62



Joined: 17 Dec 2007
Location: Jeollanamdo, South Korea.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:29 am    Post subject: Nonsense Reply with quote

Hagwons and recruiters will make all sorts of excuses about you being too old, and not having the right accent or the right look. Sometimes, though this has as much to do with their silly prejudices, and their obsession with superficial characteristics than the EFL market.
For example, the one of older teachers in Seoul told me last year that in 2004, when he was about 34 years old, recruiters would tell him that they could only find jobs for people under 30. And in those days, EFL in Korea was booming.
And guess what-in the spring of this year my hagwon boss was complaining that there was a big shortage of western teachers. And this was only a few miles outside of Seoul!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
nicwr2002



Joined: 17 Aug 2011

PostPosted: Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

+1

I know a few places who will only hire older teachers because they consider them less flaky and more responsible. They've been burnt too many times by those college kids.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Been There, Taught That



Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Location: Mungyeong: not a village, not yet a metroplex.

PostPosted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Funny, I logged onto Dave's tonight just so I get in my story about coming back to Korea. So, I guess this is as good a place as any, better than most, in fact.

I'm 54 years old myself, a US citizen and have been teaching for just under 4 months in my current position, the first one I've had in 8 years since going home to Wisconsin in 2010. I was teaching here from 2001 (37 years old) to 2003, then again from 2008 to 2010. I have a simple bachelor's degree with some online master's work, but nothing to show for it.

I didn't begin seriously looking to come back until May of 2018, and I can truthfully say that the time it took to get my hands on the CBC, or 'Identity History Summary', and apostille it, etc, was the big reason I didn't get over here sooner. Plus, I sent everything here, thinking that I had correctly done the apostilled diploma and I hadn't. By the time I arrived, the teacher who was supposed to show me the ropes had been back in the US for two weeks.

From the time I put my resume on Dave's, the only place I posted it (seriousteachers.com, if you've ever used them, is all about online teaching now, so I didn't really try through them), I had recruiters contacting me. I was upfront about age and all else and told them exactly what I had to offer and what I wanted.

Granted, I wasn't seeking the high life, just a hagwon position at the highest salary I could get. I know that with time in country, I can move up appreciably when the time is right. I surveyed everything, from city positions to far-outlying jobs. I stuck with Teach ESL Korea because they were actually very honest with me about what their employers wanted, and very personable and helpful. They were painfully thorough.

There was an Ulsan job at a really good salary that my recruiter sent my information to, but they wanted a full master's, not a know-it-all English wiz like me who speaks German, Dutch and increasingly more Korean (and if things are in the master's category as they are in the bachelor's, it probably didn't matter the field, as long as it simply was).

The upshot was that, through a recruiter, I was never without a job offer, and never once heard about being unacceptable because of age. If they just never revealed that kind of thing to me, that's fine. The goal was to get here and get paid for being who I am. .

I chose where I wanted to work, which just happens to be in a modest-sized hagwon in a small(er) Gyeongsangbuk-do town called Mungyeong, where the unspoken motto seems to be 'take the bus, the train don't go there'; either that or 'if you want that, go to Andong'). To be fair, Mungyeong is small only in terms of its social calendar and municipal outlook. It spreads out quite well, and rests between a couple of main thoroughfares.

I work for a well-off English-proficient employer who does double duty, with a first floor full of English and a second full of math. English follows the Little Fox system, so a preset and fairly easy teaching setup, and every month the guy asks me if I've checked my account and did I get paid.

Initially, the contract stated I was to pay my airfare and get reimbursed, but I genuinely didn't have the funds at the time and the employer wanted me to be there, so he paid it.

Someone may say, yes, but Mungyeong is so far out of the loop (okay, so I admit that if some places have very few foreigners hanging around, I seem to be 'the' foreigner in Mungyeong. And I can't find a decent shop that will repair my laptop; there are two places that hang out a shingle, but they never seem to be open), but I said that I got what I wanted, and I haven't been disappointed. It has the SaeJae, that's gotta account for something! And the zip line is awesome, and actually famous in Korea.

Besides, I've taken the 2-hour bus ride to Dong-Seoul (Gangbyeon, TechnoMart(anybody know why in the name of all that is digitally advanced in Korea; why TechnoMart has no public Wi-Fi? I've asked; they don't. Talk about paradox revisited ) more times than I can count, and this city is big enough to have a HomePlus right next to Baskin-Robbins. A 20-minute bus trip will get me to Sangju, slightly larger with a Krispy Kreme and an E-Mart.

By virtue of my contract with KT--Unlimited data is just something you Can't Get in the US anymore--and TV on your phone at no extra charge, of course--, I'll be looking for a second year, definitely, whether I stay on here or move up to a better offer, city or both. Ilsan is still my favorite city-suburb and Hwaseong fortress my preferred destination, so I pin some form of hope on getting back there.

All that is just by way of encouragement, and to say that fears about no jobs and age being an absolute bar to employment are so far--for at least the past 18-years--all baseless, if you're flexible and open-minded. I've worked in everything from after-school programs--Jukjeon, end of the yellow line--to a girls' middle school add-on job arranged by my hagwon employer in Daejeon. The oldest foreign teacher I've ever worked with was almost 70 with a prominent beard, and the kids called him grandpa.

My very first employer, 2001, farmed me out to another branch of the same franchise, and little did I know that it was on the down-low, if you know what I mean!

Anyway, I don't think the trade in foreign teachers is going to go belly-up anytime soon, even if the pickings still are mostly limited to those eager souls who don't have much in the way of money, drive nor foresight and don't know a thing about what they're getting into. Or guys like me, who actually want to be here doing what they're doing.


Last edited by Been There, Taught That on Mon Dec 31, 2018 8:08 pm; edited 3 times in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
amorphous154



Joined: 20 Jan 2010

PostPosted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Been There, Taught That wrote:
Funny, I logged onto Dave's tonight just so I get in my story about coming back to Korea. So, I guess this is as good a place as any, better than most, in fact.

I'm 54 years old myself, a US citizen and have been teaching for just under 4 months in my current position, the first one I've had in 8 years since going home to Wisconsin in 2010. I was teaching here from 2001 to 2003, then again from 2008 to 2010. I have a simple bachelor's degree with some online master's work, but nothing to show for it.


Nice post to give some people insight on coming back to korea after having taught there before. Does it feel different these days? I taught back a little under a decade ago then came back for family reasons and its been a grind in the rust belt here. Ofc there are politics, some tribalism, topsy turvy economy here, just wondering if that is happening over there as well. When I was there I just remember the only issue was like boredom, but I am kind of tentative to think of traveling back there if its anyway like the problems some of us face back home in some part of the country. Im still deciding if it would be worth it to give it another try although I dont remember a lot about it!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Been There, Taught That



Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Location: Mungyeong: not a village, not yet a metroplex.

PostPosted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
When I was there I just remember the only issue was like boredom, but I am kind of tentative to think of traveling back there if its anyway like the problems some of us face back home in some part of the country. Im still deciding if it would be worth it to give it another try although I dont remember a lot about it!

Citizen and non-citizen are two entirely different chapters of the book of life, in my opinion. You're right, though, in one respect: boredom would be my only concern if I wasn't so eager to explore and find out things. I have the time and money to do that here, and that's what puts me at peace with the whole setup.

There are a lot of benefits to not being a citizen. I've got no political affiliations, no national nor family obligations, no involvement in the cultural systems and history and no way to get any if I wanted all that (I don't). I'm an interested bystander on a working vacation. I've been hired to teach English and in my main area, my language rules the roost. No Korean necessary nor expected out of me.

I've got enough connection to reality, however, to know that learning a little Korean goes a long way on the streets and in the shops and marketplaces, especially in a non-big city locale like this, but I see enough signs in English to be able to get around without it, too--even in this locale.

If you want to have Korean and foreign friends, you do. If you don't, it's up to you. Anywhere I've been at anytime I've worked and lived here, that hasn't changed. Neither has much else. the pace of change in Korea is glacial, at best: Hagwons, Norae-Bangs, PC cafes are as prominent and important to kids and young people today as they have been the last 18 years.

Pororo was popular then and he still is now. Cars still park on the wide sidewalks--and wherever else is handy--and motor scooter drivers, those pizza-delivering crazy men, still pull up at red lights, look both ways and do an end run across the crosswalk and back onto the street before the red has even gotten hot. And ATMs still close at midnight.

Tradition still manifests itself in impromptu public displays of national affection, like the costumed drum circle I saw not so long ago on 'culture street', a supposed pedestrian-only walkway, and in dutiful fervor toward the preset national festivals like Chuseok and Solnal (Lunar New Year).

And, need I add, I still don't drive--never will. However, I still won't pay the higher-than-I-think-it-should-be price of a bicycle. So, I walk around town and take the bus, which is cheap, to places farther away.

Myself, I'm a loyal, patriotic citizen of one country: the US, and that's my charm in the eyes of Koreans who meet me, especially the older set. You wouldn't believe how many of my students express the desire to speak English just the same way I do.

In four and a half non-consecutive years of being in Korea, right up to now, not a negative word has ever been said to me and not a dark alley has made me afraid to walk into it. I reciprocate, of course, and stay the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet (so say I!).

I don't live everywhere, so I have to say I don't know about other places, especially the capital, but I have to say that, to me, in the past four months, the look and feel has been the Korea I've always known and been comfortable living in. No high crime rate, no (obvious) mafia gangs, no Yakuza, no huddled masses of immigrants allowed to yearn to breathe free, but just Koreans living their measured daily lives with a wary but harmless eye on the foreigners among them.

You can probably tell that I don't go so far as to read the newspapers and other printed matter outside textbooks and tourist publications, either. Why fret about things I'm not invited to be involved in?

I go as deep as I can and care to: I get a cell phone contract, I pay the water and gas bills on the Paywell machine at the bank, I shop at the local mom n pop shop for prepackaged rice and curry sauce and yellow cream soup, marvel at the high prices of imported foods I like and need (butter: 9000 Won; margarine: 1000 Won), then buy them; I try my hand at raiding the popular and ubiquitous claw machines and I avoid the Dunkin Donuts shops and fast food joints to the best of my conscience's ability. Then I go home.

It's all pretty routine, but if you're going to live somewhere, you can't get around routine, so you might as well choose an easy one. Really, in all honesty, I just don't want to go back to the US without any money, because I know that I AM involved as a citizen there, so I'm saving as much as I can here, and enjoying the way I'm doing it.

First time, next time, every time, Korea seems to plod on, dragging its centuries old and diligently respected mores and values behind it, and all a tourist, foreign teacher or both in one like me has to do is is grab the rope somewhere and hang on. We don't drag; we just do the upkeep on our part and drop off when we've reached our destination.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Job-related Discussion Forum All times are GMT - 8 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling.
Contact Dave's ESL Cafe
Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved.

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group

TEFL International Supports Dave's ESL Cafe
TEFL Courses, TESOL Course, English Teaching Jobs - TEFL International