Today we are starting a series of articles dedicated to the recruitment of foreign language tutors. It is challenging to find the right employee, even more so because a contemporary teacher of a foreign language, particularly a teacher in a private language school, must be someone going beyond academic standards. Check out what to draw your attention to if you want to make the right choice.
A foreign language tutor is not just a philology graduate with perfect knowledge and command of a language, who perfectly demonstrates the grammar rules governing a given language code, one who majored in teaching and is backed by many years of experience. A course instructor is also someone who breaks the mould, has creative ideas and is capable of getting involved in the building of the school’s image.
Only resourceful people, able to adjust themselves to students and not the other way round, thinking in modern terms and thinking quick, can be successful teachers and bring genuine profits to your school.
We do not want to negate the classics. They have their own exceptional and unique assets we will present later on. But today’s entry is dedicated to unorthodox course instructors and to how to recruit them. The analysis below ignores native speakers for the time being.
This is a standard thing that you receive hundreds of CVs in response to your job advert.
Do you have to review each one? It would be perfect if you did so. But let’s be honest: the recruitment process is time-consuming and not always can we afford to analyse all applications in detail. After a preliminary screening to check if a given candidate has linguistic competences certified by a diploma, studies, years of work or learning abroad, divide the documents into two batches.
The first of them covers the applications accompanied by a cover letter; not a standard one sent to anyone but one customized to match your job offer. You will certainly feel whether a letter (this can be even the e-mail’s content encouraging you to view the attachment containing their CV) was written with work for you in mind, or if it’s a typical “copy and paste” text they have used repeatedly for months, if not years.
This can be a relevant piece of info for you. It will show if the candidate is a person not afraid to devote extra time to additional efforts if they are committed and ambitious. If they use a clichéd cover letter specimen, will they be able to prepare classes going beyond textbook routines? And what if they sent only the CV attachment and not even bothered to write a few cover sentences? Don’t waste your time on lazy guys. It is very likely their approach to work will be similar. By the ways, such behaviour is also ill-mannered.
The other part is comprised of visually attractive applications.
Do you do a double take? You re-read the same politically incorrect sentence? You ponder what a nicely-looking CV has to do with candidate’s competencies? What kind of recruitment is this if we are made to look at a photo? But this is not about beauty. If someone applies for such a colourful position as a foreign language teacher in a private school by sending you a dirty grey CV, perhaps they will turn out to be too serious or plain boring to do this job… Perhaps not, perhaps appearances are deceptive but think for a moment if you have the time and financing to verify this.
Reach out immediately to the persons who from the very first moment – even though you don’t know each other – make themselves remembered positively. Colourful applications, well and graphically displayed experiences and skills, a well-taken photo – first of all a smiling one, unlike ones from school ID – do not preclude professionalism. On the contrary, they may testify to the modern way of thinking, creativity, unique personality.
This person will be the showcase for your company. They are to attract new students and make them stick to your school. They must not arouse such feelings as boredom, predictability because those lead to reluctance. In the time of high competitiveness in your sector, each detail, even what the course instructors wear, how they surprise students, what they will come up with to make classes attractive and the learning process effective, gives you better chances to keep your school afloat.
Already at the stage of the screening of application documents you are able to read a lot about the candidates for the position you offer.
For example, attach great attention to technical aspects of the submitted texts. Do they contain spelling mistakes? Does a given candidate know where to put the comas, do they use the language correctly? This person is supposed to teach others. Language culture, testifying to a higher level of linguistic awareness, should be a basic requirement for all teachers.
Only then they can start building the teacher’s authority (we can determine the level of such correctness also on a certain scale, depending on whether such person is a philologist or not). Spelling errors can certainly happen to anyone but if there are several of them in the application, perhaps this person is too chaotic. Will they be able to track students’ mistakes if they are unable to focus on correcting their own errors?
Those three pieces of advice related to the selection of candidates for course instructors at the stage of the screening of CVs and cover letters may help you to make a decision. The next stage is a recruitment interview. How to carry it out well to choose the best candidate and not be deceived by shams? We will cover those topics in the next entry in the Manager’s Zone on LangLion Blog.
 |
Check out: |