The Queen’s University Teachers’ Overseas Recruiting Fair

This time last week I was walking into my final interview of the day at the Teachers’ Overseas Recruiting Fair at Queen’s University. It had been an exhausting day: I had already prepared for and attended four other interviews, considered a job offer, attended presentations, and imagined myself working on three different continents. Over the course of the day I experienced moments of joy, anxiety, success, nervousness, confusion, compassion, relief, sadness, and clarity. I consider the day and the weekend a success in spite of these mixed feelings and the fact that I did not sign a contract before driving back home at the fair’s end. I had gotten what I wanted out of the fair: the opportunity to practice being in an interview, to gauge my marketability as a teacher, and to simply experience TORF and what went on there.

I fully plan on returning to the fair in a few years, and I expect that I will find a school that is the right fit for me. I would strongly encourage anybody interested in working abroad as an educator to attend this fair, as it is very well-organized and run by the Placement Office at Queen’s University’s Faculty of Education.

I felt I was just about as prepared as I could be for this fair, but there are definitely a few points that I would tell anybody planning on attending TORF, and so following is a list of things to remember before heading to the recruitment fair.

There are a lot of jobs available for a limited number of educators.
Being invited to an interview is exciting; being invited to a lot of interviews is overwhelming.
Remember not to feel pressured into taking a particular position.
Be aware of your gut feelings.
Come with a friend that you can check in with throughout the day.
Bring a laptop so that you can do some quick research about a school right before the interview.
Make time to attend information presentations put on by the schools since these sessions might paint a better picture of the school than the interviewer can during the interview itself.
Interviewers will start making their offers on the Saturday afternoon.
Ask about volunteer opportunities available near the school for which you are interviewing.
Know why you want to teach internationally, in the country where the school is located, at the school for which you are being interviewed, and the grade and subject for which you are being interviewed.
Listen to the advice of the interviewers.

Good Luck!