ITTT FAQs – Should I pay for a job placement teaching English abroad?

When looking for TEFL/TESOL teaching jobs abroad you will inevitably encounter agencies offering guaranteed positions for a fee. This appears to be a great convenience on the surface as it saves you the need to send applications and attend interviews. But there are several things to consider before parting with your money for something that you might not need. There is a huge demand for English teachers throughout the world and some estimates put the number of people learning English at 1.5 billion. With such numbers it is easy to see why there are hundreds of thousands of TEFL/TESOL jobs available every year. In some parts of the world the number of jobs outweighs the number of teachers significantly. With such demand you should have no trouble finding a job without paying for the services of an agency. Another issue with going through an agency is that your choices are often severely limited with regard to location, teaching hours and salary. You may also want to consider whether you would want to work for a school that is happy to hire teachers it has not met or spoken to first.