The Job Search

It's been almost one month since I've come back home to Toronto, Canada. And, I've been sick for almost three weeks of that time with a cold in my throat that just would not go away. It's, thankfully, almost gone now!

But, I've not been lazy either as I've been searching for a new job for the past three months now; for a couple of months before I left Korea and for the past month since I've been back. I've also been working freelance for the wedding photography studio that I used to work for before, too. They have some urgent post processing work that needs to be done. I'm still there for about another week and a bit, I think. Hopefully.

Anyways, the results of my job search have not been good. By this time, I am about ninety job applications into the search; about a dozen to Japan, about a dozen to China, about a dozen to Taiwan, about fifty to Korea and the remaining approximate dozen in Toronto. To wit, I have had a grand total of four interviews and possibly one bogus job offer from China that did not even have an interview associated with it. They also never supplied any current employee contacts that I requested either. Hence, the bogus job offer conclusion. Of those four interviews, three of them were from Japanese companies and one from a Toronto company. I have another one in Toronto tomorrow, too. Wish me luck!

If you do a simple statistical analysis on those numbers, you would think, all things being equal, that I would have gotten the most job interviews from the Korean companies. But, no. I had none, Zero. Zilch. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion that, as it is well known around the internet community already, English teachers teaching in private schools in Korea are for non-Asian English teachers only. Period. If you want a good teaching position in Korea as an English teacher, you cannot be of Asian decent. It's as simple as that. I won't belabor this point anymore as an internet search will get you all the information you will need on the subject. Suffice to say that, for the present time, I am no longer looking at English teaching positions abroad. For the time being, I will stay in Canada and find work in Canada, whatever that work happens to be.

As a very good friend of mine said to me recently regarding this predicament, and other related matters; "there is no place to run!"