So you’re thinking of teaching English abroad? Maybe you already have a TEFL, maybe you don’t. Either way, I hope this post helps you if you too are looking to start teaching English in Vietnam. If you are a regular reader or a follower on Instagram then you will know that after six months of backpacking Asia, Josh and I moved to Vietnam to start working as English teachers.
We’d never been to Vietnam before but had always wanted to visit so whilst sitting in our hostel room (with the token guitar player just starting his acoustic set for the day outside our window) in Palolem, Goa we interviewed for jobs in a language centre in Hanoi. I’ve had so many messages since then asking for tips/advice etc. so bear with me I’ve tried to put it together as well as I can. Not a careers advisor or an immigration expert but this is our experience and how we ended up teaching English as a foreign language in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Requirements for Teaching english in Vietnam
First things first, I am only speaking from our own experience and the job search that we conducted. I have a BA in French and Spanish and an MA in Translation Studies and Josh has a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Clinical Psychology. Every job advert we responded to required us to have a Bachelors degree. Additionally, on the most part the jobs we applied to also required the candidate to have a TEFL certificate with a minimum of 120 hours. Only a few of the jobs we applied for required previous experience, this was often ‘desirable’ criteria but not ‘essential’.
tefl with tefl.org
One of the questions I’ve been asked the most is whether we already had our TEFL qualifications. The answer is yes. Whilst in our final year at university we both enrolled with TEFL.org to take their combined 120 hour online/classroom course. This required us to complete 100 hours of online assessments and assignments (not half as arduous or time consuming as it sounds).
TEFL.org offer a variety of different courses dependent on what you’re looking for and what your schedule allows. With studying for our degrees, we knew we wouldn’t be able to dedicate the whole time to a classroom based course so the 100 hour online and 20 hour classroom option was most suitable.
The online side of the course was super easy to complete and was made up of short assessments and assignments, including lots of grammar expression exercises, video components and creating lesson plans suitable for a TEFL environment. You have a tutor that you can contact throughout the process and we both found this to be relatively easy.
Once you have completed the online section of your course you will have to sign up to a ‘classroom’ based weekend (there are a number of locations across the UK) we chose to do this in Leicester. It’s basically an intensive 20 hour workshop with lots of simulating TEFL situations – better than it sounds and we actually had a really good laugh with all the fellow TEFLers on our course.
Following this, Steve our trainer signed us off from the 20 hour classroom based section and we received our TEFL certificates in the post a few weeks later. I would definitely recommend TEFL.org if you’re looking into teaching English in Vietnam or elsewhere. We paid in full for our courses this is in no way an ad, but they do often have fantastic deals and completing the course with them also gives you lifetime access to their jobs board which is super helpful! If I remember rightly we got 40% our course because we booked over a bank holiday weekend – so check them out.
FINDING A JOB AS A COUPLE
Now, if you’re not planning to move away with someone else then just skip down to the next section. Josh and I were keen to TEFL but we had no intention of living in separate towns, cities or countries. We didn’t want to be placed in the same school or anything but we wanted to be able to live together and only have reasonable commutes. We started sending out emails separately that mentioned us both and replies coming back were just in duplicate with both of us contacting the same schools with the others respective details.
So, we changed tactics and created a joint email address, yes cringe. But it worked. You’d actually be surprised about how many companies applauded our thinking. Anyhow, if you’re looking for work as a couple in Vietnam or Asia in general then we did the following:
We created a joint email account, we wrote an opening paragraph explaining that we were a couple looking for work together in… (insert name of city) then we added a paragraph introducing ourselves and then we attached both of our CVs and TEFL certificates to the email. After scoping out ‘recommended’ and reliable’ job boards we actually applied for work in Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam.
A lot of TEFL job adverts do detail that they are open to employing ‘couples and friends’ as it means you won’t be alone arriving in a new city and working in a new environment. We got so many replies, probably too many to be honest. Enough to require a spreadsheet to monitor our progress with applications. We had various Skype interviews and conversations with different companies but we had our heart set on Vietnam.
As we had applied for jobs together via email, all of the companies we were interested in actually ‘interviewed’ us together. I mean I say interview lightly as these were all just pretty informal chats about us and what we were looking for. Honestly, that’s the best advice I can give you with regards to finding work as a couple, in a nutshell just be upfront. Applying together worked well for us and resulted in us landing roles teaching in the iGarten and April programmes with Apax English in Hanoi.
WEBSITES WE FOUND TO BE GOOD FOR THE JOB SEARCH:
ESL Cafe (International)
Ajarn (Thailand)
Vietnam Teaching Jobs (Vietnam)
FACEBOOK GROUPS
Many articles recommend joining Facebook groups, which I would loosely advise. There are many groups that you can join to help with the job search, but just be aware that from our experience these are full of people waiting to tear a strip off you for missing a comma in your job posting. Join by all means, get the information you need, take note of email addresses and companies advertising positions but unless you are mad keen for leading yourself like a lamb to slaughter then don’t put yourself out there with your ‘I am looking for work’ post.
pAPERWORK
PSA – don’t do what we did. When we left the UK we knew we wanted to teach English in Asia but we didn’t want to take our hard copies of our certificates with us in our backpacks. Naively, we assumed that scanned copies of all our important documents would be enough. How wrong we were. After a mild *major* panic in a hostel room in Mumbai that our travels were over and we would have to go head in hands back to our parents, skint and miserable we managed to figure out the paperwork situation.
Now, there are many people working ‘illegally’ and without legitimate papers etc all across Asia. I’m not going to advocate that for a second. So what you’re about to read only applies if you are too wanting to work legally and with all of the correct paperwork, permits and legal stuff.
If you are applying for a TEFL position in Vietnam (or Thailand) you are required to have your Bachelors degree (and if you already have it) TEFL certificate legalised and notarised by the relevant important legal people in your home country. Read more about this process here.
FINDING A JOB FROM OUTSIDE OF VIETNAM
I mentioned above that we were in Mumbai/Goa when we were applying for jobs. We decided to apply for work before arriving in Vietnam to ease with Visa entry in to the country. This is not necessary but just something we felt comfortable with. Accepting a job with Apax meant we could enter the country on a work visa as opposed to the standard tourist visa. As soon as we started working we were able to organise our health check and police check for work permits, our registry of stay and our 12 month single entry visa, allowing us to avoid visa runs.
You can absolutely wait until you arrive in Vietnam before applying for any jobs as there are so many positions advertised all the time, but just be aware that you will have to do visa runs and re-enter the country on new visas until you have an official work permit.
WHEN TO LOOK FOR A JOB:
From experience, companies hire year round. We started training at the end of April and began teaching in the first week of May. There is seemingly quite a high turnover of teachers in a lot of places so there are always roles advertised. With Vietnam in particular, there is a two week period I would avoid sending off applications and that is the TET holiday at the end of January.
WHERE CAN YOU TEFL
Working in a language centre you will predominantly work in the evenings and weekends (17:00-20:45 weekdays and blocks between 08:00 and 21:00 on weekends) as the majority of language centres (particularly in Hanoi) schedule classes outside of public school hours.
As I mentioned above, we had a Skype interview with Apax English, a company with many language centres across Vietnam. We had read a lot of good things about the company so we went for it. Overall we had a positive experience with the company which if you would like to discuss in more detail then please feel free to email or drop me a message. On the whole for a foot in the door to the TEFL world, then Apax is a great choice, the money is very good, the hours are pretty decent and they made our arrival into Vietnam very easy.
Other language centres to consider:
Language Link
Apollo
ILA
GPA
There is also the option of working in public schools. I can not speak from experience about working in a public school but I do know that the hours are slightly more than language centres and the pay can vary. Expect to work between 7AM-12PM and 2PM-4:30PM. If you have a Masters in Education, there is also the very lucrative option of bagging a position in an International school, so if you are super qualified that could be an option.
So, that is everything I can tell you about our experience finding work Teaching English in Vietnam. All in all, it has been so much fun and we have fallen head over heels for this beautiful country. If teaching English abroad is something you have been considering, particularly if you fancy moving to Asia then I would wholeheartedly recommend Vietnam.
If there is anything else you would like to know, then comment below or drop me an email or DM on Instagram. As ever, thank you so much for reading!
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