I haven't gotten any email updates either.

I'm single so cant say, but I strongly support wrldtrvlr123's approach. As an admin this year and part of the leadership and hiring team, I like the combined cover letter and individual resumes as a package (please, please staple them). Its too easy to get them mixed up and loose the teaching couple unity of an application. My job this week was to sort through the resumes for next year into "IB Experience", and "No IB experience", and I know I mixed some of the teaching couples up.

By the way, for you American candidates, it would really help if you formatted your word documents for A4 sized paper instead of US Letter, it kind of messes with the flow of your resume and makes it distracting to read (especially if you used a template in Word to make it) either that or send PDF documents. You can do this (thanks to Ichiro) by selecting >File...Print...Save As...PDF< and giving it a file name, make sure it has the PDF extension (.pdf) at the end of the file name.

I cant say anything about the school but Luxembourg is a lot like Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland except with more of a european feel, its small and there isnt a whole lot going on. Brussels is pretty close and i guess you could call it "the city" but really the location is so central its easy to get pretty much anywhere else in Europe for the weekend. Its a very relaxed, sedentary life. Great place to raise kids, and have a family, not my top pick for the single life.

I never taught or worked in Belgium, just visited when I was hunting for chocolate.

Well easy but not apparent. This site is a dumping ground for bad or negative reviews. Honestly there are no poor reviews because the schools in France are by and large pretty nice, and they have low low turnover, so not a lot of people leaving who would complain. To summarize, "no" review is about as good a review as you will usually see on here. If you'd like to make your mark and be the first, have at it.

I studied for a year in Paris, always wanted to go back and teach, but it's hard to break into. There are maybe 1 or 2 posts a year at international schools in France, of which there are maybe a dozen schools.

There arent really any free public international school job fairs. The market is pretty much cornered by: Search Associates (SA), International School Services (ISS), and Council of International Schools (COIS). They are all fee based recruitment services. You have to be a member of their agency to attend their fairs.

As I said in my earlier post Search (the largest of the three big agencies) only has about 12 or so Eastern European schools in their database. You could easily google and book mark them and check their HR page easily enough for vacancies, and then email them your resume materials. In that case Search wouldnt really give you a lot of return or value for your money. South america has more schools, and in that case Search might be worth the money in how much time they save you. More and more schools are doing interviews via Skype now, though some schools will insist on a face to face interview, and the fairs bring everyone together at one time in one place.

Basically, if your going to do a broad, and expansive job search with the intent of finding a position for next year no matter what then a recruiting agency is the way to go. If your only interested in a handful of certain schools, and its either a job with one of them, or forget it, I think you can do the work and be successful on your own (many people find positions on their own with out one of the big agencies).

All clients need to update their profile. There is a window of time where you will remain active even if you havent updated, but eventually they will deactivate your profile if you dont update. If your OK with that and dont really use Seacrh at the moment there isnt a rush or need to update your profile.

I think I post this every couple of months and then someone accuses me of being a "Tier Czar".

There is no objective definition of Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3, and as such there is no "master list" of who is in which list, and to that end even if there was no one would agree on it. Youd have some consensus with schools like WAB (Beijing), and ISB (Bangkok), but there would still be a lot of disagreement. Though if your on the international school circuit long enough you get a feel for which schools are at which tier. School quality also has a lot to do with where you are a tier 2 school in Hong Kong, might be a tier 1 school in mainland China...

There is no "definition" of Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3. Its all subjective, in general when teachers describe a tier 1, etc school from one another it comes down to

1) Compensation package
2) Work environment.

Historically the compensation package is the priority, not because of greed or anything, but because its easy to quantify. If your in Brazil, $30K is better then $28K. Schools that pay more for a given region tend to have more stable finances (a sign of longevity, given enrollment, and reputation), and have larger endowments, meaning they have been around long enough to develop efficiency and have well planed capitol projects. Better schools can charge more in fees, and be more selective in their admissions. This creates more "cash" on hand for salaries and benefits.

COMPENSATION:

Typically includes (in this order of importance/priority:

1) Salary (based on number of contract or teaching hours per week)
2) Housing (including utility costs)
3) Tuition (If you have kids. In addition if you have a non teaching spouse, how easy is it for them to find a job)
4) Transportation (Including Airfare, moving, and settling in allowances).
5) Insurance (Mostly how good the medical is)
6) Retirement (Including end of year bonuses).

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

Working conditions is the far more subjective of the two. It means something slightly different to everyone. But can include as a general principal (and these get more "fuzzy" the lower I go):

1) Staff/Faculty/Parents:How qualified are your co teachers? Do they know what they are doing? Do the aids, secretaries try and help you? Is the PTA crazy helicopter parents? Are the parents really the ones running the school?

2) Admins Management Style: Biggest reason for a school to go down hill. Does the admin back the teachers? Are they just a spokesperson for the owners? Do they yield to parent pressure? Do they value faculty input? Do they care?

3) Organization: Does the front/back office run efficiently? Do you get reimbursed in a timely fashion? Are salaries paid on time? Is the school relationship with the local immigration bureau good, can they process visas, permits, etc quickly?

4) Resources: Do you have a projector? Access to computers, internet? Can you make copies when you need too. What about textbooks, are they old and out dated, do teachers even use them? Whats the library look like? Whats the cafeteria look like (do they feed the teacher lunch?) Do you have a classroom/department budget, or do you have to ask for everything?

5) Academics: Do they have a curriculum? Do they use the curriculum? Does the department share a common curriculum or does everybody teach what they know and prefer? What are the assessment/grading policies and procedures?

6) Community: Are the people nice, friendly, helpful? What's there too do in the area? Is it safe? Clean? Is transportation easily accessible? Availability of shopping/groceries? Medical Care? This could be a long one....

JOB SEARCH:

Most 3rd tier schools advertise on TIE Online, Joy Jobs, and with SEARCH. You can also find them on Daves ESL Cafe (They advertise everywhere, except the "selective" recruitment agencies, such as ISS)

Tier 3 schools either pay very well because the only reason someone would work there is the money, or they pay enough to get by. Most of these schools are in the middle east or africa. There are some very "beautiful" schools that Dante could use to deepen the levels of hell a bit, and the only reason they have faculty is because 1) The money, 2) Desperate teachers who cant do any better. Of course one issue that i see common with Tier 3 schools is related to "safety" either the regional culture is very very rigid, with serious consequences for what you might consider "minor rule infractions" or the region/area could become quickly hostile and dangerous...

Your typical "ESL School" is right around the border between tier 3 and tier 2 schools.

ESL language teaching doesnt count. I'm sorry, and you have no teaching experience, in your certification area, nor any experience teaching what so ever. None of the first tier schools (which require 2 years experience) will talk to you, and the elite schools (which typically require 5 years) will laugh behind your back So what do you do???

Mine arrived the next day after requesting it. Dont know if I was just lucky and it was close to "auto invite time", but they dont have a large database to manage. Was everything alright with your last position and reference? Are you no longer employed? At this time of year, they should have no later then a week turn around time on invitations, and they should be responding to your email within 24 hours normally, 48 hours max.

Thats the problem with the Sydney, Australia fair: 1) Its an awful long way to go for anyone who isn't in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, and to some extent Singapore. It doesnt have a huge turnout because its not really convenient for anyone. 2) Even Australians dont go because its in the middle of the week. 3) The Bangkok fair is literally 2 days away from the Sydney fair. 4) That first week of January everyone is just getting over new years/new years eve, which is an expensive week to travel. Most professional teachers just dont want to go direct from a holiday to traveling internationally for a job fair. 5) Principals get tired and cant possibly go to non stop fair, after fair. So you get the head/principal at the big fairs, and then some lessor admins as "reps" at the smaller fairs. Which means you may not be interviewing with someone who can hire you by themselves.

You need to think of the cambridge, Bangkok, London fairs as really "supper" fairs because they usually run back to back with another recruitment fair (M.A. and Bangkok have Search+ISS, and London has Search+COIS). All the other fairs are just short, small time fairs.

My feeling is that Search is really attempting to "Own" everything that they provide. Even the list of school attendees has some value, and to just post it up on their website to non-members detracts from the value reserved for paying members.

How long ago did you request your invite??? What are your qualifications? Honestly, they move pretty fast...

I think you will be successful in a job search overseas, your husbands math and computers is going to put him in high demand. It really depends what level you want to pursue. elite schools are different then the other 1st tier, or 2nd tier schools.You will ge scooped up by a second tier school very early if you want, you might have to wait a little later for the 1st tier schools. You will be a little harder to place,Spanish and Russian are not common languages supported by many international schools, and when they do become available they almost always go to native speakers. You might have to settle with ESL, which sees considerable demand every year.

Honestly Search doesn't have a lot of schools in eastern Europe in their system, combined they have about 12 schools or so,but if you reallt want to go to eastern Europe you can probably do it by yourself.

Well three really, either:

1) The money (they can suffer through anything if they are paid enough, and you can bank some serious money afte a year).

2) They can't do any better and are desperate for any job. I've had an experience where a teacher had a sexual offense conviction and couldn't get a job anywhere but 3rd tier schools, and only if they weren't too careful about doing a background check.

3) They are newbies who think the can change a school from the inside.

I'm sure there is a small group of those with other reasons, but those are the majority reasons.

Are you guys kiddingme, seriously "he who shall not be named"???

For the record I have never, never advocated that Search is "all about the fair". In my opinion Search is all about "the database". What your paying for is really access to searches database of school profiles and job vacancies. Depending on your time commitment Search can simply and stream line your job search process. If you have a broad job search, then a recruitment service like ISS or Search really helps, if you have a very narrow focus or limited region then you can do the work easily on your own. You could bookmark those schools individual websites and check them periodically, and save yourself $400 (or just join for one of you, probably your husband) and just search for schools with vacancies for both of you. Many schools "save" primary positions for teaching couples.

Let's not kid ourselves though, LOTS of teachers get interviewed and hired at the fair, and if your not a member you can't go (well officially). I can get an invitation every year to the Bangkok, Cambridge, London fair. Search is in the business of placing teachers, many teachers want to go to the Bangkok (BK) fair or London fair because its "elite" but many of those teachers are either not couples, or not high demand teachers. All the experience in the world might make you a deity as a primary school teacher, but the reality is there are a lot of primary school teachers, and after a certain number of years additional years dont really add very much. Im sorry but Search Associates (the actual associates) have bills to pay to, and they really dont make their money until you have a job, and space at the fairs is limited (its only reasonable for principals and heads to see/meet/interview so many people). If you can get an invite you can always go unofficially.
That being said your husband (meaning you too) will very likely get an invite to whichever fair you want (maybe not London).

My Search rep, and others are worthless, it doesn't mean they all are, I've heard many say their rep was great, I just wish I was them.

@OP:

The fairs to go to are Cambridege, Bangkok, and to a lessor extent, London. The other fairs (Ohio, etc) will be a waste of time, and too late in the hiring process. Your husband is a competitive candidate and in a very high demand area, he will have no problem finding a position, andas a trailing spouse, you won't either. Eastern Europe is prett competitive though, so as long as your heart isn't set exclusively on that, I have little doubt you, will be successful. TIE and Joy are nice compliments to a job search strategy, and I highly recommend them for last minute positions. You need to take advantage of all your options and maximize your job search energies. Either go big, or go home.

Incidentally, IB training isn't nearly considered the same as IB experience, a lot of new and entering teachers think it is, and the IBO has done a great job marketing their IB teacher awards, but they don't mean very much.

So whos seen the new Search Associates site (be sure to update your application)?

Updating my application wasnt hard, except some of the values didnt "stick" after clicking save. Other then that it wasnt hard. I liked the option to upload an actual resume/CV.

As for the rest of the site. I like the facebook approach I suppose. The major improvements I liked were:

1) Ability to email my associate (not that they do anything) from the site directly.

2) The Alerts, box on the Dashboard is new and nice, and i like the "position matches" box though i doubt id ever really use it.

3) Love the expanded search functions with more options that will actually add utility FOR ME, including: 1) Search by position start date. 2) Region (not just country). 3) Teaching Level.
I imagine some candidates will appreciate the 1) Local Opportunities For Non Teaching Spouses. 2) Age Limit Option.

4) The BEST change (for me at least) is the option to save schools to a favorite list and then go back to that list and just search those schools regardless of where they are. Makes job searches at the "american" schools or just the elite schools a lot easier and more convenient.

5) The enhanced search results show school and the positions available at a glance, which is helpful with very broad searches. I like being able to just click back and forth from the school profile to the search results page, as opposed to the old drop down menu (OK minor improvement, but it appeals to my way of browsing).

6) The individual school profile pages seems too scattered, too much white space and scrolling in my opinion. i like to read straight down a column. The addition of the schools self reported tax, I think, is under reported. I DONT LIKE having to click at the bottom of the profile on each vacancy position to expand it.

So what about everyone else, any opinions, impressions on the make over?

No offense Ichiro but that math doesnt work out. If your at step 9 and making 240K Baht a month ($7,833USD) or $93,996 a year. If you receive about $1K USD raise a year and have 11 steps to go before you hit the step 20 cap, you would be making about $105,000 a year which is about $6,500 more then the cap of $98,457, or a 6.5 year salary increase difference, thats over a quarter of their whole salary scale.

Lets agree to not quibble though, the ISB salary is very high for the economy and much closer to your reports.

So OK, 100K+ Baht is available and starting salary at ISB, but its still "ISB" "THEE" elite school in Thailand, and they get what 3,000 applications for a vacancy? So while its "true" it doesnt represent the majority of teaching positions and teachers salaries in Thailand.

Lastly, personally I wouldnt work at ISB, I dont want to do that much work, and I interviewed with ISB last year at Search Bangkok, and when they described their "typical" work day, I was not enthusiastic to get into that, Id already done that in japan, and its not my thing. Not that its not for other people and if the OP is that kind of teacher then he should go for it. Doesnt hurt to apply.