we live in a high speed, highly organised world. Humans now work to the rhythm of the machine. The internet has changed everything. Yeah, right.
This is how you apply for a couple of teaching jobs:
1) Go to the school website. Hunt around for the list of vacancies for half an hour. Give up, go for a cup of tea and remember that the vacancies are on the school's other website.
2) Go to the other website, find the list of vacancies to apply for them online...and download the application for to be sent off by snail mail.
3) Fill out the form, including the silly part about how a hostile critic would evaluate you.
4) Go back to the website, and find by clicking the wrong button that actually you can apply online, by filling out a form which barely resembles the paper one. But first you need to register.
5) Register.
6) Wait for a day for your instant registration confirmation email.
7) Get the email, finish registration, fill out the online CV for five of the jobs. Click the "Submit" button.
8) Wait for something to happen.
9) Get an email saying they'd like more information about you. Spend an hour summarising the last five years of your life, and send the result.
10) Wait two days for something to happen.
11) Get another email saying their policy is to allow only one application at a time, so could I please indicate my order of preference for the jobs.
12) Spend a minute staring incredulously at the screen, then reply listing your applications in random order, "most desirable" at the top.
And that's as far as I've got. But at least it gave me plenty of time to re-register as unemployed - a much simpler procedure:
1) Arrive ten minutes before your scheduled re-activation interview. Tell the receptionist you're there.
2) Wait forty five minutes. Get called.
3) Watch as the interviewer spends ten seconds going through the forms you filled out this morning. He forgets to ask you for the vitally important ID and bank details without which they allegedly can't process your claim.
4) Sit as the interviewer finds you a low paid job vacancy in a city a hundred miles away, prints it out, and spends ten minutes calculating how much richer you'd be if you got the job.
5) Sit still some more as he realises he got the figures wrong, and recalculates.
6) Restrain your joy as he arranges another interview in two weeks time. After which someone different will put you on a training scheme for warehouse work.
So there you have it. With any luck, one pointlessly slow piece of bureaucracy will get me out of the fucking country before a pointless and slow piece tries to give me lessons in how to carry crates.
While waiting to hear back about the job vacancies in Moscow, Brno and Ho Chi Minh, I've been perusing other sources of TEFLy work.
There's i-to-i, who for the modest sum of GBP450 will fly you to the Czech Republic, train you to teach, and give you a guaranteed job. Yeah, right.
There's HuntESL, who offer a wide range of teaching qualifications, seemingly ratified by, erm, no one at all. And once they've awarded you the qualification only they recognise, you can search for a place to work on their extensive list. Which is currently empty.
And there's CactusTEFL, who I'm sure are respectable, but have so far proven impossible to register with.
How a hostile critic would evaluate you?
ReplyDeleteThey'll be thinking outside the box next or having blue sky ideas.