An Embarassment of Riches

One thing I kept hearing when I took my CELTA course and decided to start teaching ESL/EFL is that there is, literally, a world of opportunities out there, pretty much all the time. But I never really had proof that this was true.

Until today.

Yesterday, I sent out a grand total of four applications to different schools or recruiters--three in Russia, one in Korea. Three of these four places have responded already. One just let me know about its online application system and indicated that I would be getting messages through it in the near future. But two, counting the recruiters in Korea, have given more substantive replies.

The second school to give a substantive reply is a school in Moscow that said in its ads that its clients are mainly highly motivated professionals in their early twenties. They want to have a telephone interview with me and asked when. I told them I could be available for a phone interview next Tuesday or Wednesday. I would be very much surprised if this interview didn't result in an offer, given the shortage of qualified ESL/EFL teachers in Russia.

All of this seems striking in comparison with previous job hunts, which involved sending out literally hundreds of letters for months and not getting a single, solitary offer. And, often, not even getting the courtesy of a reply.

I was always told that "companies can't reply to every candidate." Bull. These same companies manage to send out zillions of pieces of junk mail and solicitations every year. A simple form letter saying, "we have no openings at present" is not too much to ask in return for doing what career counselors recommend for job hunting, which is to creating a cover letter from scratch for each company to which one submits a resume, based on real research and showing a knowledge of the company, and addressed to the person at that company who has the authority to hire people in your particular capacity. I don't think that, in exchange for that effort, it's too much to expect an HR department to manage to add your name to a list of other applicants in whom it is not interested and send at least a letter acknowledging receipt of materials.

The other aspect I always hated about conventional job hunting in the U.S. was the constant necessity of pretending you weren't looking to work because you needed the money to live on. I've found out this is not how things are done in Taiwan, or in many other cultures. I guess Americans are hypocritical in this regard; we talk about money much more freely than people in a lot of other places do, but we can't admit the basic fact of life that people work for money.