A friend of mine often quotes his father, a used car salesman, as saying: “There is the right car for every person. And not every car is the right car for every person.” This axiom holds very true when it comes to hiring teachers for overseas schools. Each school has its own unique culture and personality. What works very well with certain parent communities does not work at all with others. There are pros and cons to living and working in every country, and each city demands and offers different things to the people who live in it. What would be considered normal professional expectations of teachers in certain schools could be considered unrealistic in others. In short: The landscape of international and American schools overseas is complex and diverse, full of apples and oranges and bananas and pineapples.
To better understand my point, picture this: it’s the initial “Sign-Up-Session” for interviews at the recruiting fair. This is a 90-minute slot of time where typically 150 schools, alphabetically organized in a massive ballroom, have 650 teacher candidates forming lines to talk to recruiters in the hopes of setting up a longer interview and in the end, getting a contract offered. ASB’s sign-up table sits next to the rest of the schools from countries that begin with the letter “I.” At some fairs there are almost 15 schools from India, Indonesia, Italy, and Israel. These 15 schools range from 1,500 to 200 students. A few are year-round boarding schools and one only has 130 school days a year. One school has bamboo-thatched classrooms on the beach, and another sits in a protected military compound. There are schools with completely open-admission policies, and two schools that only admit students who score in the top 10% of a standardized entrance exam. There are British schools, IB schools, AP schools, and schools governed by the local ministry of education. Schools that are not-for-profit and governed by an elected Board of Trustees, and others that are for-profit and owned and run by a single family. One school has 80% of its students from ex-pat families and another has a student population that is 90% local. And the list of elements that make each school unique goes on and on. Obviously, each of these variables has a significant impact on defining the “type of teacher” a school recruits, and the “kind of school” that attracts a certain “type of teacher.”
So, back to our used-car-salesman’s analogy: “Which school is the right school for a teacher?” And which of the thousands of candidates, are the best fit for ASB? This is THE question. As a Leadership Team we spend a great deal of time defining the personal and professional profile of what we believe is the best fit for ASB. We have also identified the characteristics of what we think makes for highly effective teachers at ASB.
It goes without saying, that recruiting is one of the most important things that ASB’s Leadership Team does. But then again, the same is true of any organization. In the end, an organization is only as good as the people in it and finding that “right fit” between the very best teachers, out of hundreds of amazing teachers, and ASB is the trick. Recruiting teachers for overseas schools is fascinating, competitive, fun, and extremely complicated. All a school can hope for is a parent community that is highly satisfied with educator working with their children.