Korean Job Discussion Forums

[chokachi]

Hi everyone!

Next week, I'll be coming for 3 weeks to apply to unis in person, as I've had no success applying to the uni jobs posted on Dave's. I would really appreciate your advice on which areas best to focus on.

I'm tempted to focus on medium sized towns (40k to 500k) with a solid number of universities, rather than big cities (Seoul, Busan, Daejon etc) or very small towns. My thinking is in the big cities the competition might be too high and in the small ones there might only be few spread out universities, making the search inefficient.

So here are my questions. Is focusing on medium-sized cities a good idea? Secondly, what specific cities do you recommend? Thirdly, should I follow up in person to the jobs I've applied on Dave's or focus on new ones only?

A little about me. I'm 34 with a Bachelors and CELTA. 5 years TEFL experience - 3 at university (Thailand), 1 at public school (Korea) and 1 at hogwan style school (Taiwan).

I appreciate any thoughts and advice you might have.

[Milwaukiedave]

I agree you probably should focus on the more rural schools. The only problem is three weeks is going to go rather quickly and you are going to need to pack as many interviews in as you can (I'd say 5 maybe 6) and these could be places that are far away from each other.

As to your experience, you have university experience and a CELTA which is great.

[chokachi]

Thanks for the reply Dave.

That's a problem I'd love to have - too many interviews and not enough time left. In that case I could extend my stay no problem.

What about the actual areas? Which towns have most universities? I was thinking along the lines - first week, Gyeonggi (maybe Yongin and Seongnam); second week Gangwon (maybe Chuncheon and Wonju) and third week Cheongju and Mokpo.

Are these reasonable choices at all? Are there better?

[KoreanAmbition]

[chokachi]

[KoreanAmbition]

If it's a stock cover letter, and I could tell, then I'd throw your resume away. Really. Stock cover letters are not a good idea.


You should always customize a cover letter...for every single job you apply for.

Why do you call it deceptive? You're supposed to write about how you can contribute to the areas they focus on teaching and how you have experience in the things they require. That's not deceptive... if you can't show them that, then that's the reason you haven't been getting interviews so far.

The theme of "I was driving by and saw your university...so I thought I'd drop off a resume" is not the only way to do things. If you don't want to research their website, then at least search the net for old job posting and see what they want in their teachers. Then encorporate that into your cover letter.

I'm not saying you're supposed to pretend to be head over heels in love with the job. But you should be focusing your application to that school if you can. You don't have an MA apparently...but if you apply for graduate school you have to submit a Statement of Purpose (SOP). The first rule of SOPS is that you don't send the same one to every university. If they believe you did, then you will never get accepted. Obviously it's easier to customize an SOP, but the same principles apply to your current situation, and if possible, you should follow them.

If you go meet the people at the school and don't like them, then just don't work there. But don't confuse the 2 concepts....they're completely different.

Concept 1) Do what it takes to get offered a job.

Concept 2) Accept a job if you get offered it.


You seem to be worried about getting offered a job at a school that you don't want... that's the easy part. You don't have to accept a job.... but there won't be anything to reject if you don't convince them to give you an offer.


Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a lot of people thing stock cover letters are the way to go.

[air76]

While I agree that it is best to always customize your cover letter and resume, it isn't always feasible, especially in a case like this where he'll be trying to canvas as many different universities as he can.

Clearly for the schools that he knows in advance that he really wants to apply to, and for ones that have advertised that they are hiring and he has a specific person to address the letter to then he should take the 5-10 minutes to personalize those application packets....but for a lot of schools there simply won't be enough English information.

I am not arguing that it isn't a good idea to personalize the cover letters...of course it is...but I don't think that it is necessary. There are other things that he could do to make his resume stand out....put together an application packet for each school...use different colored paper for different documents (obviously professional colors, not green and red and pink) with the resume printed on very nice expensive paper (be sure to have a color photo on your resume as well). Include copies of letters of recommendation, copies of your degree and any teaching certification that you have...include a separate document outlining your teaching methodologies....put all of this stuff together into a plastic folder for each school, and not just paper clipped together.

I don't think that the cover letter will be an issue (there are hardly enough qualified candidates at small town universities for the hiring manager to be able to throw away in 5 seconds any resume that isn't accompanied with a personalized cover letter)....what will be an issue is trying to get to more than a couple different schools per day...generally universities are out of town, and then you have to track down the right office and maybe the right person if you're lucky....on top of that you won't know which schools are hiring at the moment, which schools require an MA, and so on....it could be a real waste of your time....not to mention that the week after this is finals week.

At any rate...I wish you luck, but you could definitely be in for a very frustrating 3 weeks.

[KoreanAmbition]

Air76,

I agree, I just thought based on the post early in this thread that the OP was considering himself lucky if he got 5 or 6 interviews.

My suggestion was based on that. Obviously if he's going to be sending out 50 resumes, then he can't customize them all... I agree.

The thing is, the OP referred to it as deceptive, and I really don't think that is the case.

Based on what you're saying though...if the schools really won't have many applicants in the first place, then why is the OP not able to get some form of a call-back based on the regular method of applying?


For the record... I assumed he was putting together a professional package for every university.

Also, my suggestion of tracking down a foreign teacher alleviated the problem of not finding someone in hiring; you can leave the package with the foreign teacher and get them to hand deliver it to the hiring personnel.

[chokachi]

Guys thanks a lot for your replies. I really appreciate your feedback. Some really solid points were made.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the list of towns that I mentioned? Other suggestions would be great too. Thanks.

[Thiuda]

[chokachi]

Thanks for the tip Thiuda

[air76]

[cubanlord]

[air76]

[chokachi]

Yonsei sounds good to me. I'll definitely drop by.

Any word on other non big city unis out there? They don't have to be "top 15 in korea" or anything. Bottom 15 would also appeal to me.