What are my chances of getting an ESL teaching position?

3 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

   —

   **What are my chances of getting an ESL teaching position?**

   Hi everyone!

   i’d really appreciate some thoughts regarding my case. I’ve been fantasizing about moving to the land of the rising sun since I was a young child and now I’ve finally mustered the courage to take some actions.

   I’m a 25F, an EU resident and a Russian citizen. I hold a degree in marketing and have some experience working in the field, though, ironically enough, I make most of my money being a tutor and teaching English to Russian speakers via zoom. It started 7 years ago as a side gig and grew into the work that’s been giving me a decent living. Unfortunately, I don’t have any teaching degrees or any proven experience as I, uhm, refrained from paying taxes in Russia (which I haven’t been feeling that bad about recently). As a teen, I had all kinds of amazing tutors, so I implemented their practices into my work, The students are happy and they show good results, so I believe I’m quite good at it. I have a FB page with around 15 positive reviews (written in Russian :/)
   Also, I’m thinking of getting a CELTA. Would that increase my chances of getting a job?

   Thanks in advance for any feedback

   *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/movingtojapan) if you have any questions or concerns.*

2. It’s a bit difficult as a Russian. ALT is basically out of the question unless you went to a school taught in English for 12 years. Eikaiwa is possible but there are so many native speaking applicants it is a little difficult for a non-native speaker to land a job. Not impossible, but difficult.

3. To riff off what u/ApprenticePantyThief said:

   Your best bet would be eikaiwa work. But it’s not going to be easy. There’s a lot of bias against non-native speakers in the industry. As awful as it sounds it’s going to come down to 2 things:

   1. Your accent. If you have a noticeable Russian accent while speaking English it will probably work against you.
   2. Your appearance. If you’re European Russian you’ll probably be fine. If you’re one of the “darker” (I said it was awful) minorities you’ll probably have issues.

   The eikaiwa industry is *horribly* biased. If there were enough blonde-haired, blue-eyed Californians to fill all the available positions, that’s who they’d hire.