A while back someone (I can’t recall the handle) asked whether the sub would like to know how hiring decisions are reached by school owners. I’d be curious to know myself, so was wondering if those here who are in charge of hiring would outline their system.
I’d be curious as what you look for in the teacher’s background (qualifications, amount and type of experience), personality factors (how they present themselves at the interview) as well as how you evaluate them during the interview (what question you ask, or tasks you set, and why).
Anyone game to spill their secrets?
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**I’m not a school owner or even recruiter/hirer.** However, there was an Interac hirer who posted a month or so ago. I remember that he mentioned anyone overweight was docked “hirable points”. I believe they also mentioned liking anime and age as demerits.
My current place mentioned that they rejected several people for being overqualified, i.e. having a master’s. They also rejected people for not already being in Japan.
Another place I’ve since left mentioned that they do “discriminate” sex. They have two teachers and will only hire one of each sex. Even if there’s an amazing female teacher, they won’t hire her over a sucky male teacher if they already have a female teacher.
One final place I’ve worked at has discriminated against hiring anyone with an accent that wasn’t, well, “white” (American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, English). They rejected people from India, etc. They did end up hiring one because he was so good otherwise, but generally they wouldn’t.
I interview and hire for my company, a juku/eikaiwa in a smallish prefectural capital.
Whenever we post a job ad, we get 200-300 applicants. I narrow that down to ~10 for interviews. Everyone knows that most eikaiwa work is not really teaching. I look for some experience or qualifications, but it is not a requirement for our standard eikaiwa teachers. We do have positions that are more serious, doing more ‘real’ teaching and those positions require qualifications. The turnover rate there is almost non-existent because the pay and work environment are very good. For standard eikaiwa, some of my best hires have been those without any relevant experience. I look at educational and employment background. Education and Linguistics majors are preferred, art and music are also positively viewed, as is English. Everything else is neutral. Teaching, tutoring, customer service work, and work with children are viewed favorably. Other kinds of experience are considered case by case.
In the interview, I describe the job, company, and city and ask the applicant about their experience. I probe their motivations a bit and ask how they might handle certain situations. Then I ask them if they have questions for me. That’s generally where the decision is made. Somebody that doesn’t have anything to ask is almost always eliminated from the pool. If you’re uprooting your life and moving across the world and you don’t have a single question for an interviewer, I don’t think you’ll do well. Being outgoing, easygoing, and curious are pretty important to success in the role. So, I look for people that give those impressions.
In the end, you just can’t know how somebody will be from a couple interviews online. They’re trying to show off their best and that may be very different from the reality. Plenty of people say they are an extrovert and love kids in an interview when in reality they hate kids or are extremely introverted and suffer from crippling social anxiety. There have been some hires that seemed like a good fit and turned out to be nightmares to manage and cost us many students. I’ve had some hires that I felt only fine with but turned out to be amazing.
Discrimination is very real in the industry and in the hiring processes, as another poster commented. I have strict rules from the owners re: what kind of candidates I can move forward with. Heavy accents that deviate from a Standard North American or ‘Hollywood’ dialect are almost always out. This means most Scots, South Africans, New Englanders, Aussies, and others. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get a non-white candidate approved. I’ve managed a few but it is not easy. Gender is also a big one. probably 85-90% of applicants are men, but we need to have at least one woman on staff because we have some students who are afraid of or not comfortable with men. In general women have more turnover because life in Japan is harder for them.
My experience is probably going to be quite different and narrow in comparison to typical eikaiwa/ALT hiring practices, but some things will likely overlap.
I frequently consult on hires in the dispatch that I work part time for, especially for higher profile schools and during hiring season. I also sit in on interviews when I can, and occasionally ask questions if the content of the position is beyond the knowledge of the hiring manager.
This particular dispatch tries to syphon the more qualified staff from other lower tier companies, and is fairly selective. The standard topics that are hit are experience, qualifications, Japanese ability, the schools they have worked with, and why they want the particular position. Depending on the position, an education relevant BA and 2 years experience is usually the minimum. On the other end we have Ed/Eng. MA’s with 5+ years experience on our roster in a few important positions.
What weeds people out a lot of the time is if it’s obvious all that they know has come from being an assistant or eikaiwa worker. This usually comes out if asked about methodology or execution of lessons. They’re not expected to cite specific methods or anything like that, but if their answer to everything is to play a game about it or they can’t explain assessment it’s a red flag.
Another filter is Japanese ability, people without it wond get a hard no, but they won’t be eligible for the higher responsibility positions offered.
For personality, again if you put off a strong vibe of “I learned how to be a teacher by being super genki in an eikaiwa” or if you’re applying for a solo teaching Sr. Hs. position and you exude elementary school “native” assistant energy then that can hurt your chances a lot. I’m also the resident “weird personality” sensor, since the rest of the staff is Japanese and awkwardness can be hard to pick up on in your second language.
These threads always make me chuckle, as a black man.
Imagine racially discriminating for a job that pays minimum wage to 250,000. Glad I got out and now have successful businesses.
To other minorities, hustle/skill up and get out the industry (working for someone). Having some weirdo and awkward white dude with no tangible skills get ahead on you on a minimum wage job is some mental damage I don’t even wanna think about.
Former Eikaiwa Owner here.
The two most important things were character and intelligence. Generally a decent person with a good head who can learn trumps experience and education any day. Being to speak in clear concise sentences was also a necessity.
Other pluses were:
* Japanese ability / other language ability / a history of studying foreign languages
* Family in Japan
* A teaching degree / experience in their country
* Customer service experience
* Not being American
Automatic disqualifies were:
* Being bad at English
* Poorly formatted CV e.g. Careless mixing of fonts and font sizes
* Being late to the interview without any contact
* Any hint of rudeness either to people at my school or in comments about previous workplaces / customers
* Poor hygiene
* If my receptionist got a bad vibe from you.
Race, gender, and appearance never played any part in the hiring process. However, in the many years I owned the school, only one person from a “non-English speaking country was” hired. His English was better than most native speakers and he had a very neutral accent.
Our first criteria is a resume without spelling and grammatical errors. This eliminates more than half of the applicants.
I’m about to go on a rant. I’m not a school owner but I’ve noticed some things.
1. My boss refuses to hire anyone from East or Southeast Asia. Even if they were fluent in English and had a near perfect understanding of grammatical syntax.
2. He also for some reason has this infatuation for American applicants. (even if WE the teachers and Japanese staff knew they weren’t right for the job)
3. Anyone who was overweight or aesthetically unappealing would also not get the job. We had a guy from Canada apply and checked every bullet point, but he couldn’t get up off the floor fast enough in our toddler lessons too keep up with the kids.
4. He prefers young male applicants between the ages of 20s-mid 30s.
Now time for the rant.
My boss is an American and is VERY opinionated. He’s actually caused several of our students and parents to quit after one of his lessons. He’s short tempered, calls the kids stupid to their faces and talks shit about US the employees behind our back. All in all he’s a man child with no sense of leadership or charisma. It’s his Japanese wife who holds the entire business together. Another American he hired, almost immediately, just due to the fact that he was American, did not give a flying fuck about anything. I had to cover several of his shifts, apologize to parents on his behalf and write up his lessons. Simply because he did not care. He showed up drunk most days. Oh and at this time I was studying for my master’s in a Japanese university while working part time. So at times my boss would call me OUT of class and tell me that I had to cover his shift because of reasons XYZ. Thank goodness I’m leaving the position in April.
Side note: I’m Bahamian (A lot of employers seem to forget about the Caribbean when hiring.) We were colonized by the British so, English is our official language. Expand your reach employers and stop the discrimination, you’re cutting off your own leg.
As a former eikaiwa teacher, my perception is you first need to pass a basic skills test including –
* 36.6 -ish temperature
* BP in the 120/80 range
* Breathing and other signs of life
* Sentient
IF you can pass that, then being a native speaker of English helps greatly with being white a significant bonus.
A few -but *only* a few- extra points for relevant educational background.
Maybe things have changed in the past 20 years though.
We’re looking for four things:
1) professional (being on time, prepared for class, dressed correctly, etc.)
2) teaching (classroom management, experience of teaching different ages)
3) teamwork (communicating and working with others)
4) growth (wants to improve their skills and develop our curriculum/materials)