HOW TO ACT LIKE A PROFESSIONAL
So you've chosen a country, gotten a response to your resume, and now you've got an interview, in person or by telephone, with some representative of the school. How to pass yourself off as a professional?
Let me tell you a little story first.
I spent a summer living in Surrey, outside of London, with a couple of British guys I had met in New Orleans. This was in 1993.
They'd started their own small landscaping business at the beginning of the summer, and were surprised to find their was quite a bit of demand for their services, despite the fact that they knew nothing whatsoever about landscaping. They'd simply gone around one night stealing a lot of tools from people's garden sheds, put an ad up at the local supermarket, and they were in business.
Now I realize that landscaping and gardening are not exactly tantamount to rocket science, but it does require some knowledge, which they generally didn't have. Nonetheless, they were successful. A couple of nice young fellows, they could easily charm the bored housewives who were paying them to do yardwork.
Once I witnessed a routine trimming of a rhododendron hedge turn into a violent butchering through inattention. There was a huge irregular gap in the wall of the hedge, and the housewife commented worriedly on this.
The two boys were utterly unflustered. They simply explained that they thought that it would be delightful to create a sort of grotto here, where, for example, one could but a chair and watch the sun go down, or perhaps place a small bird bath. The housewife quickly agreed that would be lovely, and gave them 100 pounds to go buy gravel and a bird bath, and ended up paying them for about four more hours of work.
This was a lesson learned for me. The difference between an amateur and a professional is in most cases simply an ability to bullshit effectively.
Personality is a VERY LARGE part of any job dealing with the public, and nowhere moreso than in the fly-by-night English teaching trade. Never forget that.
Many English schools are so desperate for employees that you'll be hired sight unseen or after a two minute interview, but nowadays more and more schools are trying to present a modicum of professionalism, so you might have an interview.
Three possibilities: you'll be dealing with a DOS (Director of Studies) /academic manager type who's a native English speaker, or you'll be speaking to a foreign speaker who studied English in university and knows a lot more than you do about it. Or the third (and fortunately less likely these days) possibility -- you'll be speaking to some dumbass foreign businessperson who barely speaks English at all.
If you're going to an interview in person, think a little about your appearance. An obvious tip, but I'm surprised how few people bother to follow it. Appearance matters damn near as much as personality in this business.
The interviewer will likely already have read your resume. If you've got no experience bullshit and say you've taught people individually in very informal private lessons. Say that you realize it's very different from teaching a class, but you've always enjoyed it and you're eager to try bigger classes.
If you're trying to get by with a fake certificate, just don't mention it at all, and if you've made it this far the interviewer probably won't either. If you have a real one and no experience, mention how much you enjoyed the course. Sound motivated.
Try to speak clearly. Obviously this is important if you're talking to a foreigner, but the DOS is probably judging you by how easily you can be understood, not by your knowledge of the present perfect tense.
By "clearly" I'm referring not just to enunciation but the elimination of all the excessive verbiage that most native English speakers use every day without thinking about it much.
For example: The DOS asks the question: "So why are you interested in living in Mongolia?"
the nervous newbie replies: "Oh, geez, gosh, I've just, it's just like I've always wanted to live abroad, y'know, and these two friends of mine, y know like these guys I went to school with back in Oregon, they were there last year, they went there by like train from China, and they couldn't stop like talking about like, how cool the people were and how the buildings were all like real pretty, and they didn't like the food so much but I like ate at a Mongolian grill recently and thought it was pretty good. I don't know, really."
BUZZ! WRONG ANSWER! Take away all the "like"s and the "and"s and there isn't much left.
Here's a correct answer: "Well, I've always wanted to live abroad. A couple of friends of mine visited Mongolia last year and they really loved it."
Answer questions directly, see how easy. I know it might take some practice to start talking like that, but give it a shot, you'll be surprised what you can accomplish.
Sound confident, even if you're not. A confident, well spoken and enthusiastic person with no experience or certificate is going to get a place before a nervous, shy well-trained teacher any day of the week. Probably best to be positive, although English or American DOS's might well appreciate a sly joke or two at the expensive of the local people.
The questions you'll be asked will probably be very typical interview type questions, don't expect any brain-stumpers like "How many quarters stacked end to end would it take to be as tall as the Empire State Building?" Why do you want to live here, what are your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, etc etc. As I said, your answers are generally not as important as your ability to impress your interviewer with your ability to communicate clearly.
Now of course the ability to bullshit a bit is helped if you know a little bit about what you're trying to bullshit about. To that end I've compiled a RECOMMENDED READING LIST that has a lot of good books about teaching, and will also enable you to bullshit more effectively.
While you should be enthusiastic, try to be cool as well. Like the Fonzie. Don't speak too much, because it might reveal your ignorance and they'll know they can push you around. Keep in mind the questions that I offered in my "How the fuck do I find a job" article. Those questions asked in a suitably calm manner will probably impress the interviewer to no end.
Now, you might, if you're having an interview in person, have to give a five-minute "sample lesson" or some such, or even prepare a lesson plan. Rare, but it happens. A frequent one that's chosen to seperate the knowledgeable from the novices would be something like: demonstrate the difference between the present perfect and present simple tenses. Check out the recommended reading list for sources for this sort of info, and of course there are loads of lesson plans floating around the Internet.
Last but not least, try to show that you have a sense of humor; that's godawful important in this game. How to do that?
Well fuck if I know. If your very presence in an English school job interview doesn't already show you don't take life too seriously, I don't know what will.