Most competitive country for ITs

[fine dude]

Have your say without naming the schools.

[Thames Pirate]

Is there one? Highly desirable countries either have tons of schools or the schools are not so fantastic (pay, working conditions), so they aren't more competitive. Or else people have options in the national systems?

In the EU maybe France?

[PsyGuy]

I would also add or they have very few ISs (IE. Iceland).

I would say its a toss up between France (a fair number of ISs, but really high demand, as its the #1 spot for female ITs), Ireland (almost zero vacancies, this will be a big recruiting year for Ireland), Switzerland (great comp).

[shadowjack]

Japan at the upper tier of schools- if you get into crap school it's hard to make do.

Singapore at the big three - and people always want to go to Singapore!

Holland/The Netherlands - some very good schools and very livable. Bike EVERYWHERE.

[sid]

What’s the question? Country with the most competition for jobs? Country with best package for IT? Country where teachers have the most vicious competitions for “best bulletin board” or “teacher of the month”?

[fine dude]

Sid,
Here is what makes a country competitive for ITs:
Schools that take good care of their faculty by offering a great salary, housing, healthcare thus leading to a mini-jackpot-style annual savings, have great infrastructure and offer high quality PD. For me, that would be Thailand (Bangkok) and Singapore and we all know what schools am talking about. BTW, these countries have reasonable income tax rates, too.

[PsyGuy]

@fine dude

Switzerland than, but what youre really describing is elite tier ISs anywhere as that definition would describe elites in China, etc.

[Thames Pirate]

The elite and tier 1 schools are always going to be competitive. That wasn't how I read the question. I read it as which countries are hardest to get into, and I have to agree with PsyGuy that it's about availability vs. demand so places like Iceland or Monaco, which have VERY low availability and even a moderate demand would be most competitive. Countries like Japan and Singapore have high demand, but one can get in relatively easily if one is willing to work at lower tier schools, so the countries are not really competitive.

So you are really asking for top schools?

[PsyGuy]

I dont think the LW is asking for top ISs, considering their opening message clearly asks withing naming ISs. My feeling is they want to know which regions are the hardest to get into, and thats going to be NE regions like Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Ireland in the UK, etc. regions that have a very small IE footprint where its one or two ISs for the whole region or not much more than that and the region has a healthy and robust local DE market from which to pull staff from. Ireland for example (and they are all in Dublin) has about 5 ISs but one of them is French and one is German, and a third is only primary. In addition to that Ireland has plenty of English native speaking (western) DTs to draw from. Highly desirable places like Suva/Fiji where there is one, two ISs and with low turnover means youre lucky if theres a vacancy in your field to come up in any one given year, meaning no matter how high needs maths is you could wait years for a vacancy to appear and then your applying with hundreds a thousand other applicants.

I dont see LOS or SG has being difficult to get into, its pretty easy to get into LOS if your okay with BT¥40K-50K coin. The same is true of SG, there are Chinese and Korean ISs in SG that will give you SGD$5K relatively easily. I dont really hear of a lot of ITs excited about going to SG, guys would much rather go to JP or LOS, sure its better than VT or China but its rarely at the top of anyone bust list.

In response to @Sids inquiries:

Country with the most competition for jobs: Id say CAN, probably not what you were thinking but CAN trains a lot of DTs they dont need. Aside from that in IE see above, its a region with few ISs and any type of desirable interest and livable comp (which is why Switzerland is usually at or in the top of whatever "best" list your asking, as its EU lifestyle with ME coin).

Country with best package for ITs: Switzerland though of course some of the compounds in the ME (The Kingdom) offer more coin. Depends how you define package once you get to pension and retirment, in which case its back to NE.

Country where teachers have the most vicious competitions for “best bulletin board” or “teacher of the month: China its just the scale of ISs, meaning so many more lower tier ISs where reisgio effects are more pronounced and then magnified by that scale. You dont see it nearly as much in the WE/NE where ITs with strong labor and union protections arent going to put the effort in for a $25 Starbucks gift card. If not China Id say JP where a country that has an obsession with cuteness and a lot of EC ISs and everyone thats there wants to stay, there are a lot of ITs trying to claw their way out of ESOL. Its not like China where if you dont play the hunger games of leadership appeasement at a third tier IS you can just find another third tier IS in a week.

[fine dude]

Thank you all for your input.