International School Community Blog

Survey results are in: Which international school recruitment fair have you had the most success at?

The survey results are in, and it seems as if most visitors and members of International School Community have had the most success at the Search Associates international school teacher recruitment fairs.  The survey does show though, that most international school teacher recruitment fairs are providing at least some success for teachers.  With the exception of the Queens fair, the other recruitment fairs seem to be ones to consider going to.  Maybe we will do this survey again in 2013 and see if we get similar results.

There are many reasons why international school teachers decide or not decide to go to a specific recruitment fair, and one of those reasons is to save money.  Even though the international school teacher lifestyle affords us many opportunities and enough salary to travel and to travel often, traveling is still not that cheap.  The price of the flight and the hotel, plus the cost of the recruitment fair itself and also going out to eat each day can add up pretty quickly.  Soon, you are spending 1000s of USD for a 3-4 day “vacation” to a city in the world where you may or may not even score a job that you want.  For this reason, I suppose that is why not many of our visitors have neven been to the Queens fair to have success at it; it is in Canada which is not really close to many of the places where people are working at international schools.  It is a good fair to go though if you are already living in Canada.

What will the future hold though for the chance to interview face-to-face at international school teacher recruitment fairs?  I got my last job completely from over Skype.  I am thinking that is the way to go, and I know that many other international school teachers agree.  To be honest though, I did attend a Search Associates fair a few months before I got offered a different job completely from interviewing over Skype.  I did get offered a job at the Search fair, but I declined it.  I did though make a “vacation” out of the trip to Boston (spending some time with friends in NYC), so all was not lost.

So, what recruitment fairs will be the most successful ones for international school teachers in 2013?  Maybe Search Associates will continue to keep the lead. Maybe more teachers will be hired over Skype and the trend for online interviewing will take over the need to even attend a fair at all.