The Coronavirus Pandemic has taken a toll on economies all over the world.  While the stock market has bounced back to above pre-pandemic levels (our net worth has definitely increased!), unemployment still remains a problem. We, as a family, have been left relatively unscathed throughout.  Yes, virtual school sucks, for Simon as well as teachers/parents, but besides that, things have continued as normal.  We have been stuck in Saudi Arabia for almost two years, and our family hasn’t seen our youngest yet. But all in all, Saudi has dealt with COVID fairly well, and we have stable jobs with a fairly decent income.

In this context, you would think it would be the absolute worst time to change jobs.  You might be correct.  Even so, we have given in our resignation letters to move to a new location for the 2021/22 school year.

Why?  There are a number of reasons:

• Saudi Arabia has been good to us. We are now much more financially stable and well on our way to financial independence.
• We have been here for 4 years and the day-to-day living of Saudi Arabia has taken a bit of a toll.
• Looking for new opportunities/adventures. Also maybe a bit more responsibility career-wise (become a curriculum coordinator again)
• The Learning Support at our current school is lacking.  Simon might need more individual support.

In the end, it was a fairly easy decision, and we had no regrets about doing it.  It was our time to leave.

What we didn’t realize, as we were diving again into the international school job search, was just how strange this hiring season would be.

The Peculiarities of the International School job market

Before talking about getting a job in an international school, just a brief review of how most people look for a new job.  Having been a teacher for almost 20 years, I am not speaking from a position of authority, but I reckon this is what happens in most industries.

The usual procedure would be to search for a new job, most likely letting your current job know but that may not necessarily be the case.  You find a new job and then give notice to your current employer.

While there is some natural uncertainty, it seems relatively straightforward.

International School job searching can be a bit trickier.  Many schools require advanced notification about whether or not you are re-signing or resigning. (why is that the same word!?).  For our school, we had to let them know in November if we had decided to sign for another year or resign.  The problem is, most of the hiring takes place between December and February.  So we had to resign our positions before getting new jobs.  That is a fairly precarious position.

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International School Job Search

We always knew that this job search was going to be tricky.  Because of the pandemic, many international schools had lost numbers.  This meant that demand was uncertain for the next year.  Moreover, restriction in China meant that a large number of international school teachers we laid-off in that country, which meant an increase in supply.  Normally, there are a number of International School job fairs at swanky hotels in Bangkok, Dubai, and London.  Because of the pandemic, all of these fairs were now virtual.  This dropped the barrier to entry (time and cost).  All of these factors meant that this hiring season was much more competitive than any that I have seen.

Our Process

Going in, our job search priority was:

• looking for a job at an international school
• maybe going to the UK
• going back to teach in the US

We figured that so many teachers were leaving the profession in the US that we were bound to get jobs somewhere!

I have already written a post about some of the ins and outs of International School jobs.  It was definitely important for us to start early.  We reinstituted our Search Associates account during the summer by getting references from our current employer.  We also signed up with the Global Recruitment Collaborative (GRC).  This is another recruiting service.

We attended Virtual fairs organized by both organizations.  These were, by and large, a waste of time.  It didn’t seem that schools were in any rush to hire.  Perhaps, there was a lot of uncertainty about numbers for next year.

There also weren’t a lot of jobs for both of us.  We ended up applying for schools that had a job for one of us (usually me).  Since Alfie isn’t school age yet, we figured if worse came to worse, as long as one of us had a job it would be ok.

We interviewed for schools in a number of places: Romania, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Chile, Brazil, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and Egypt. Very few of these schools had jobs for both of us.

In the end, we had 3 job offers.  All three schools had jobs for both of us, and we would have been happy in any of those places.

We verbally accepted at the beginning of January and finally signed our contracts a few days ago! …

To Be Continued