Leaping into the Abyss

Leaping into the Abyss

by | Feb 8, 2013 | Blog

You’ve polished your resume, attended a recruitment fair, interviewed with some great schools, but you still don’t have a job offer for next year.  Now what?  Join the club.  The recruitment process in international education must be one of the oddest of any industry.  You must first decide whether you want to stay or go at your current position, often before you know if there is a suitable opening at a different school, and if there is, there is no telling whether that position will still be available when the recruitment fair begins.  I suppose the positive side to all of this is that at many of our schools we tell our students to be risk takers, and we undoubtedly model that trait in the recruitment season. For those of you who are trying to make the leap from teaching to admin, the recruitment process is even more risky.  Should you take another teaching position if you can’t step into a leadership role this time and postpone your leadership move for a few more years?  The irony of the whole thing is that as a budding school leader you’re probably perfectly qualified for teaching positions at schools you would have jumped to be at last time you went through the recruitment wringer. As I have had the opportunity to speak with a number of school leaders, as well as interview for a number of leadership positions, I keep hearing the same thing “Don’t give up, it’ll happen.”  Logically, this is likely true, since the more times one applies and the more experience one gets in the meantime, the more...