What's the best way to secure an English teaching job in Spain?

January 14, 2009 7:43 AM

I'm a qualified British TEFL teacher with about 2 years experience living in the UK. I want to teach in Spain and have applied for a few jobs online in the last month but heard nothing. I am thinking of just moving to Madrid to find work, is that the only realistic way of getting a job quickly (I don't have a lot of cash) or should I hold on and try and secure a job before I leave?
posted by aikidoka to work & money (10 comments total)

From what I know (based in Hungary) if you get a job at a job fair for language teachers, or are scouted inside your home country the pay is usually better. But if you have the time, you probably would get a better shot by showing upwith a resume and time for an interview, and you get to scout out the neighborhood before you accept anything. And while Madrid may have a lot to offer, some of the best teaching gigs are often out ijn the country where foreigners are valued more - the school often tosses perks like housing subsidies in.
posted by zaelic at 8:16 AM on January 14

You should contact the accredited institution from which you obtained your TEFL certification or at least the office in the location where you became certified and ask them for any job openings they might be aware of as well as any organizations they have worked with in the past that would be good to contact directly.

Good luck!
posted by lolalivia at 11:46 AM on January 14

You've only been looking for a month and you've only sent "a few" applications? If you don't have much of a financial safety net, keep looking remotely for a couple more months. And apply for a lot more jobs, if possible. If nothing pans out, then pack your bags. Being without a job in this economy is not a position you want to find yourself in.
posted by HotPatatta at 1:00 PM on January 14

Contact mdonley. The dude knows a lot about finding TEFL jobs all over the globe.
posted by HotPatatta at 1:02 PM on January 14

I have a couple of friends who moved to Madrid and found English teaching work pretty easily. If you do decide to just arrive and try your luck, it might be worth popping into JJs bar/bookshop and asking around. It definitely seemed like the place for expats to hang out, and you might get some good leads and advice, or at least make some friends. I think this is their website.
posted by Emilyisnow at 3:19 PM on January 14

Hm, a few problems -

• It's January, and most language schools in Europe which teach kids (which is pretty much all of them) work on the 9-month academic calendar, with many teachers contracted for that period only (ie, no rolling hiring/firing). A giant school in a place like Madrid or Barcelona probably has lots of classes over the summer, but who knows?

• Everyone wants to teach in Spain. There are millions (yes, millions!) of native English speakers already there as retirees and emigrés, not to mention the tens of thousands of North American university students studying there. It's a totally saturated market with (not universally, but disturbingly prevalently) a lot of exploitation, low wages, and dissatisfied teachers. I'd really hesitate to work there, in all honesty, just because it's so competitive.

• Did you explicitly say you'd be willing to teach kids? All day? Really young ones, like 6 or 7 years old? My second-hand understanding of the Spanish market is that it is very, very young-learner focused. If you've been teaching asylum seekers and professionals, I'm not sure how attractive that would be compared to someone with less TEFL experience but more experience with kids.

• How wedded are you to Madrid? Obviously big cities are going to have wealthier people who can pay for English classes (as opposed to, say, rural Andalucia or something), but you're going to find wealthy and upper-middle-class people all over the country. Here's a list of 23 Spanish cities over 300,000 people, nearly all of which I'm going to assume have some sort of English-language school. Google "cursos de inglés [city] " and just send out the CV. You'll get at least a few shots back.

But seriously...since you're an EU citizen anyway, just get down there! Get some bar work or something to tide you over and start freelance tutoring if you can't get a permanent position right away. Walk into schools you're interested in pursuing, drop off a CV, offer to talk to the Director of Studies at his/her convenience. A live body is always going to get more attention than an e-mail address. Call, knock on doors, put up little fliers near universities and high schools. Good luck!
posted by mdonley at 4:10 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]

Dammit, came here to say pretty much what mdonley has already said.

Madrid, apart from being competitive, will eat your money very quickly - do you have enough Spanish to do casual labour?

If you're not hearing anything back from the online applications it may be that your qualifications and experience are below par for the market. You're up against teachers with good Spanish, established job-finding networks, a decade or more of experience and prestigious qualifications. It's hard to tell from your question, but you might be underpowered as a job seeker for that market.

If you can't get a job remotely, you might find that wearing down the shoe leather knocking on doors and following up the private gigs via noticeboards in cafes and bookshops is the only way. However, you need to be able to fend for yourself for weeks, if not months while you track down that job. Again, the competition you're up against have spouses with jobs and/or pensions and/or trust funds and/or other jobs to sustain them and allow them to wait longer than you.

Have you seen this?
http://www.madridteacher.com/pdfs/english-academies-in-madrid.htm

And finally, I can't agree strongly enough that you should look into working somewhere else in Spain if that's an option. The more obscure, the better, so long as it's not tiny. Think about your strengths (have you been teaching business English? academic English? young kids?) and from there, consider areas with a concentration of your target customers e.g. University towns
posted by Busy Old Fool at 6:15 AM on January 15

Thank you all so much for your sage advice. I havent used this site for a while and it's reminded me what an amazing resource it is. It's given me much to think about and work on. I am totally happy to work elsewhere in Spain, in fact I think I would prefer a smaller, regional city. I just thought that were I to go to Spain, Madrid would be the natural place to start looking. Unfortunatley I don't have much Spanish at all (it's partly the reason for wanting to go there) and so alternative jobs would be a problem. I have taught adults, kids and teenagers in Japan for 15 months, adults in the UK for the last 6 months at a language school and teenagers for a month or so at a summer school here last year. I don't mind teaching a few kids but I would only want to do it some of the time. I really don't have a lot of money to support me more than a few weeks so I think I will redouble my efforts and apply for as much remotely as possible for the moment. I am considering other countries in Europe should Spain prove too difficult - any advice as to where I should look to would definitely be extremely well received. I'm looking perhaps at Poland, Czech Republic or other Eastern European countries perhaps. I am now even conisdering (although not very seriously at the moment) the possibility of work in Saudi Arabia (the earning potential seems unbeatable although I realise I'd have to balance that against the lifestyle)


Also I have come across an TEFL agency in Madrid EES (English Educational Services) http://www.eslbase.com/jobs/spain/7062 anyone know anything about them?

Thanks again for taking the time to offer your advice it's very much appreciated - Cheers!
posted by aikidoka at 8:58 AM on January 15

It's hard to advise you where to find a TEFL job without more information about your priorities.

Ease of finding a job? China probably takes the prize in that area at the moment.

Choice of classes? If you're not too keen on teaching kids, an awful lot of western Europe is, increasingly, going to be a hard place for you to find a job you like - that's just the way the market is going. Of course, there are still plenty of jobs teaching adults, but they're becoming rarer and thus more keenly fought-over. New and prospective EU entrants have plenty of adults wanting to improve their English.

Purely financial? Well, apart from the obvious advice of finding another profession, Saudi is obviously up there. With the current strength of the yen, Japan would be a great place to return to for a year or two to build up some savings since you presumably still have contacts there. Savings are a great thing to have, as you're now discovering.

Career progression? Anywhere with a high turnover of teachers will allow you to get promoted simply by sticking around.

Lifestyle? Completely impossible to say without knowing your tastes...

How much longer do you expect to be in this business? If you've got a 5-10+ year horizon, you probably want to think about working for a prestigious school, specialising or getting additional qualifications, which will open doors in the future and enable you to choose countries based on their appeal to you rather than how desperate they are. If you don't expect to be teaching in a few years, then go where the jobs are and where you want to live and explore.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 9:26 AM on January 15

are you familiar with the auxiliares de conversación program a.k.a. Foreign Language and Culture Assistants program organized by Ministerio de Educación y Cultura?

The Spanish Department of Education brings over tons of English speakers each year to help out in English classrooms all around Spain. Your odds of getting a position are better if you look outside the most highly requested areas--Madrid, Barcelona, and Andalucía are the most competitive.

In addition to a student visa for one year (they give you a student visa instead of a work visa because you´re considered a becaria), they pay a monthly stipend of 700 euros for 12 HOURS A WEEK OF WORK.
posted by maca at 11:00 AM on January 28