Emailing your resume to schools is the right way to go. It is, however, what you enter as the subject of your email that will make or break it for you. An attention turn-off is a subject line which is bland, such as “Seeking Overseas Teaching Position”. A super strong attention grabber and a much better subject line would be “Math teacher available NOW”. If a math position is open you can be sure your email will be read. If a position opens in the future, a quick search of the inbox will bring your resume up again.

A great place to find the names and email address of school directors (listed by country and school), is on the International School Services web site at the following link: http://princeton.iss.edu/displaydirectory/displaycountries.asp. Be aware that this page is not updated or in use anymore and some of the directors names may be dated at this point. Still, this is a good place to start collecting email, fax and physical addresses of schools.

Know about the schools you contact. A little research can go a long way. Just visiting a school's web site often yields insight into various unique facets of the school. You can use bits and pieces of this information in your cover letter to show you have carefully selected this school and are not just blanketing the world with resumes. Let directors know what you can coach, advise, and do for the school beyond your classroom work and let your background and history sing your praises for the specific needs and wants of the school.

Use Skype.com to call directors. With Skype it’s practically free to call fixed-phone and cell-phone numbers around the world. The ISS directory listed above hosts the phone numbers of schools and directors. There are many web sites that list current international teaching positions. A quick Google search will bring them up. Email your cover letter and resume and then follow up a few days later with a phone call. Being politely persistent says a lot about you. Keeping your name at the top of the list and making it as convenient as possible for a director to consider your candidacy is the objective.

Make a short video of yourself and upload it to YouTube. Supply a link to your video in all your emails. Introduce yourself in your video. Talk about your teaching philosophy. Present a short lesson. Allow directors to see the “real” you and not just statistics on a page.

Create a small web site about yourself with photos and supply a link to your site in all your emails. GoDaddy.com and many other web hosting companies supply templates so you can create a simple web site and have it up and running in a matter of hours. No technical knowledge is needed. Market yourself. Let school directors see you as the dynamic person that you are with much to contribute to their school.

Stay organized. You’ll be contacting many schools and you need to be organized. We suggest you create a file to store information, such as school and directors' names, date on which you sent your cover letter/resume, position(s) applied for and other information to help you remember to whom you sent what and on what date. Be ready for that phone call!

Remain confident. Job-hunting requires time and energy. Don't give up even if you are still looking for a job and it seems like everyone you know has found one. Keeping a positive attitude and believing in YOU is an important aspect of the job search. It does happen that schools may have openings even after the school year begins as enrollments change and some staff do not show up or work out. Remaining confident is your best option as you step into the perfect job while you remain ready, strong and confident of your abilities.
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