The ESL Teacher C · Nomad Educator

*This guide is by no means exhaustive, make sure to do your own research to reduce encountering unpleasant surprises during the process.*

You want to work abroad, but you don’t know where to start, this post is about relatively accessible options to find work and what things to consider and prepare once you find it.

Content

• What jobs are “easy to apply”
• Where to find work
• What to consider once you get hired
• What to prepare for your trip
• What to consider about your destination

What jobs are “easy to apply”

• English teacher: one of the most widely available position that you’ll be able to hold around the world, in big cities as well as in small villages.
• Digital nomad: more and more popular, especially after the pandemic and the normalization of models for working from home. You can be hired by any company in the world and as long as you have access to an internet connection, any place can be your workplace.
• Au pair: an au pair is someone that takes care of a family’s children. So it’s a full time babysitting gig, but you get food, shelter and salary. It’s a way of travelling to the destination where this family is located.
• Work as a volunteer: you can just hop on a plane with your backpack, land in a country and offer your services in hostels or farms. They will often take you in, especially if your young, and offer shelter and food in exchange for your work.
• AIESEC: if you are under 30 years old, this organism can find you a paid position in a destination abroad. They offer a moderate assistance throughout the process, so if you’re young and it’s your first time travelling abroad, this is a good option.
• Tutor: This would be in freelance mode. It’s not uncommon in places where English is not the first language for people to seek foreigners as tutors. This makes it easy to offer to people around you your services as an English tutor, or of any other language you might know and even just for homework and lesson practices.
• Flight steward: this one is self explanatory, the perks is you’ll travel to many places, the disadvantages is you’ll have very short time in each area. And you’ll have very little control over what
• Cruise ship crew: you can work as crew on a ship, but just like the flight steward, you’ll have limited mobility once on location.
• If you already have a job in a big corporation or a government position, they might have agreements with other countries to do a kind of exchange. For example, Canada has such agreements with Japan. You can do a sabbatical in your Canadian company, therefore you don’t loose your position or your years of service, you get to work in a company approved by the governments, and you keep paying taxes for Canada, you don’t loose your Canadian citizenship privileges (like health insurance).

Where to find work

• Au pair has a website
• AIESEC tends to advertise on campuses
• The others depend on your own job searching skills and marketability
• Here are a few tips for English teaching positions:
  • Dave’s ESL Café, well know in the ESL teaching community, good resource, but you won’t necessarily find the best offers here
  • through the school that gave you your ESL certificate (Oxford Seminars, the organization through which I got my degree offers lifetime placement services for their students);
  • if you are a full time student, check what services and resources are offered at your institution;
  • ask around if people in your network have travelled already, if they know companies or schools that hire;
  • ask me, I happen to know one or two recruiters, I might be able to connect you 😉

What to consider once you get hired

What if you get a proposal for a position abroad?

• Check the visa requirements for the country and make sure the company is going about it the right way.
• Make sure you get a proper contract.
• Read the contract carefully; the terms vacation time, time off, weekends can easily be misrepresented through words and assumptions.
• A contract is never final, you can always negotiate modifications and ask to clarify on paper the meaning of certain clauses. If there is a problem in the future, everything will have been agreed, written, and signed.

What to prepare for your trip

• Theres’s the serious stuff:
  • Make sure you have all your documents ready, like your passport and your visa.
  • You might need a particular set of vaccines before you go.
  • Make sure you notify your bank about the change in country, they might cause you unnecessary headaches if your cards are blocked.
  • If you need any particular medicine, make sure you can bring enough with you, or can access it abroad.
  • Get familiar with areas of the city to find a suitable apartment.
  • Learn about their transportation systems.
  • Check your options for SIM cards (they might be better than yours if you’re from Canada).
• Then there’s the fun stuff:
  • Check where you’d like to visit.
  • Check what’s fun to do.
  • Learn about the food.
  • Learn some basic words from the country.
  • Start packing.
  • Get excited 😆

What to consider about your destination

• Language
• Customs
• Work culture !!! (we don’t think about this much when we think of culture, but not every country has the same rapport between employee and managers. Sometimes there are certain expectations that we don’t consider necessary coming from North-America)

Comments/Questions

☞ Do these tips help orient you?

☞ Do you have tips of your own?

☞ Share your thoughts in the comment section 😊