Should I Post My Resume For EFL Jobs?

Both TEFL.com and Dave’s ESL Café offer teachers the chance to post their resumes so registered employers can peruse them. You can specify a geographic region and other details and schools can approach you instead of vice versa.

These days, posting your resume online seems the thing to do for jobs in a number of fields, for work in your own country. On one side it seems to give you the upper hand, and of course you’re free to pick and choose which offers you’d like to investigate further.

Given the international nature of EFL, I think some online elements are almost a given in a job search; but while I wouldn’t necessarily advise against posting a resume online, I might be concerned that if you tell a school exactly what you want, they may “miraculously” be offering exactly that, whereas if you approach the school, you can ask more general questions and see how they answer. I think it is also risky to look at posting your resume as a short cut that saves you the trouble of researching jobs and employers for yourself. This is important to do to get an idea of what’s standard and maybe what to watch out for.

Mine may be an overly cynical view; posting your resume online is not uncommon at all, and it is definitely not the same as accepting a job offer online, prior to arrival, and without asking any questions (don’t do that). It may simply be a way of identifying a group of interested employers and doing your own whittling down from there.

For anyone who has posted an EFL resume online – did you find it effective? Would you do it again?