The advice that follows draws on six years of experience in hiring for the Korean English teaching market, fourteen years of English teaching, working as the academic director of a language school, and many discussions with Korean employers, Western teachers, and recruitment firms in North America and Korea.

Be cautious in following advice from other teachers on the many job discussion forums out there. Much of the advice given is contradictory and a lot of it is just plain wrong. Bear in mind that most of the people posting on these forums have successfully found a job in Korea only once or twice and, as often as not, they are unaware of what motivated an employer to hire them (or fire them).

When to Apply

• Most of the jobs available in Korea are with private language institutes that cater to children, operate year round, and hire teachers throughout the calendar year.
• Placing applicants who want to start in September can be difficult as many applicants mistakenly believe there will be high demand at this time. This results in most schools having more applicants (many with education degrees) than positions available.
• November – June is the time when the fewest teachers are available, and when it's, therefore, easier to get good jobs.
• August is the busiest month of the year for the schools. If you are planning on a September start, consider revising your plans to make yourself available for late July or early August.

Applying for Jobs

• Do not send out an application to every employer and recruiter who advertises on the internet. Often enough, recruiters flog your resume to every language school in Korea. Although the English education industry seems huge in Korea, many paths can lead to the same job. If a language school has received three or four copies of your resume from different recruiters, they will view pursuing your application as a waste of their time, and recruiters you've been in contact may lose interest in helping you as well.
• A similar situation exists with language schools in Korea. Often enough, they will contact several recruiters about available positions, and if you've applied through several recruiters, you will find yourself receiving the same job recommendations from multiple sources.
• Note that some recruiters will claim to be representing you when you have never even spoken with them. I never send schools any information about an applicant until after I've talked with him/her about teaching in Korea directly on the telephone.
• The best way to approach the job search is to deal with recruiters one at a time so as to avoid conflicts that will result in schools and recruiters not taking you seriously. If, after dealing with a recruiter for a period of time, you aren't satisfied with what is being offered, tell the recruiter this and move on to deal with someone else.

Your Resume and Communications

There are lots of opinions on what a good resume should look like. This is the advice I give to my clients and that seem to work best for Korea:

• Provide clear contact information.
• Emphasize experience with children (volunteer or paid)
• Use easily understandable international English terms for qualifications and education. Avoid jargon, especially "I.T. Newspeak".
• Provide full contact information for previous employers.
• Do not use all sorts of fancy templates or obscure fonts. Some of them may not be supported by Korean software. Simple formatting, using tabs and underlines, is most likely to display as you intended.
• Keep references to religious, political, or social action groups to a minimum.
• If you have had several short-term jobs that are unrelated to teaching, combine them into one resume entry.
• Include the country code in your telephone number but DO NOT prefix it with any ones or zeros. International dialling procedures differ from country to country and often don't involve any zeros at all. Prefixing your country code with other numbers can result in Koreans claiming that your number doesn't work and an important interview being missed.
• Make sure your e-mail address is current and that you'll be using that address for some time to come. Applicants who change their e-mail addresses often "fall through the cracks" by not receiving job offers, or not receiving important information about visas, transportation, etc.
• Try not to use an e-mail address unrelated to your name. Ideally, use your fullname@provider.com as your e-mail address. Add a number to your 'fullname' if necessary. Some people reveal more about themselves than they should through their choices of e-mail address.
• Make sure your full name appears clearly in the 'from' column of e-mail recipients' in-boxes.
• When attaching documents to an e-mail, ensure that the documents are clearly named. "My Photo" isn't a very helpful file name when a potential employer is trying to put parts of an application together. "John Smith - Photo 1 of 3" will eliminate the chances of an employer misplacing, or never finding, part of your application.
• Turn off or adjust your 'junk mail' filter so that the job offer you've been waiting for isn't automatically deleted by your e-mail provider. Hotmail is especially problematic in this area.
• Do not use more than one e-mail address for employment correspondence!
• If you have a 'privacy manager' installed on your telephone line, consider removing it. I have had great difficulty reaching some applicants (in the U.S. especially) for previously scheduled interviews on phone lines with privacy managers installed. Korean school directors calling from Korea often mistake privacy managers for answering machines (i.e. they'll think you're not home for the pre-scheduled interview) or they think the number is out of service. In my experience over the past few years, privacy managers have cost several ready and willing applicants good jobs.

Previous Experience in Korea

For those who have already taught in Korea, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• First, and most importantly, good references from your previous Korean employer are needed. The more reputable a school that wants to hire you is, the more likely they are to verify previous Korean employment experiences. During their initial experience in Korea, some people don't think about this. If you have left a contract early, or finished a contract on bad terms with your employer, you will have problems getting another job. Note that simply finishing your contract is no guarantee of a good reference. Employers will often give a good written reference and then give a bad reference when another school director calls.
• Salaries are generally only about 5-10% higher for those with Korea teaching experience. Expecting a 20% increase is unrealistic. Consider the kind of salary increases offered to teachers (ESL or otherwise) in your home country when stating salary requirements to employers or recruiters. Keep in mind that one year teaching in a Korean hakwon by no means qualifies anyone as a professional English-language teacher
• Finally, be aware that some employers have had negative experiences with those who have taught in Korea before. There is a general impression among Korean school owners that experience in Korea can make some people fussy, demanding, lazy, or blasé towards their jobs.

Contracts and Trust

• The contract is much more important to Western teachers than it is to Korean employers. The use of employment contracts in Korea is fairly recent and most employers (both good and bad) view it simply as one of the documents needed for a teacher's visa.
• Sometimes the worst employers have the most appealing contracts, while kindly and well-meaning employers have rather brief and poorly written contracts.
• An important thing to bear in mind is that if the contract does not represent what the school intends to do, the school will break it. Teachers who negotiate contracts aggressively or "shop-around" for contracts rather than look for good jobs, often find themselves with a good contract that their employers have no intention of following.
• If a recruiter agrees to major changes in the provisions of a contract, be wary as the school may not even know these changes have been made. Likewise, any school that offers to make major changes to its contract may well have little intention of following it.
• I try to make sure that the contracts represent the jobs as accurately as possible by checking with the school on anything that seems unusual and by correcting ambiguous language. Contact with current foreign teachers is, by far, your best bet in terms of getting a feel for a job. I always put applicants in contact with current and/or former teachers when a job offer is made.
• If you go to Korea with the attitude that all employers are dishonest and are somehow cheating you, it is almost guaranteed that you will have a difficult time at work, alienate yourself form the Koreans around you, and end up coming home unhappy. While you should obviously expect the major provisions of your contract (salary and teaching time, housing, etc.) to be followed, fussing over minor things is likely only to result in your employer having a negative view of you.
• Before you accuse your employer of violating your contract, think carefully about how you may be doing the same (teaching privately, for instance). In Korea, the nature of employer-employee relations and issues of trust differ significantly from those in the West. While you think your employer may be unconcerned with your welfare, s/he may be doing what a Korean employee would view as positive encouragement. Conversely, you may be completely unaware of behaviour on your part that communicates to Koreans disinterest in the job or your employer's success.

Professionalism

Although it may seem relatively easy for some people to get jobs in Korea, if you behave unprofessionally in your employment search (for example, missing scheduled interviews or sending out lists of demands instead of applications), it is unlikely that reputable schools will express much interest in you and it is more likely you will end up in a bad situation.