Greetings to all job seekers, new and old! My name is Douglas Meyer, and I am the new Job Information Center (JIC) coordinator for the JALT Conference, taking overfrom veteran Kent Hill. Yes, it’s true, I have big shoes to fill, what with the conference just around the corner. And with so many professionals together in one spotfrom November 21st to 23rd, all focused on improving language teaching and learning in Japan, the conference is sure to be a hit. From a career standpoint, with over 2,000 language professionals coming together, the JALT conference is unquestionably the number one networking and recruiting opportunity in Asia.
For schools, the JIC provides facilities to post job openings, review candidate résumés, and hold interviewsat the conference.Occasionally, schools ask their full-time foreign staff to headhunt for them. Headhunting is recruiting, and if you’ve been asked by your school to help out, the task of “recruiter” has just been added to your job profile. Just email me, Douglas Meyer, at <jic.coordinator@gmail.com> right away. I will send you some paperwork to fill out and get the job posted.
Moreover, the number of job postings in the JIC has been growing. Several years ago, many teachers didn’t have computers at home, and so the JIC would collect and display job info found from different Internet sites that might be of interest. This was discontinued, so now the JIC only posts job ads directly received from recruiters and schools. This is good for recruiters, and good for job seekerstoo: Recruiters get featured exposure, and seekers will only find posts meant for them.
This being said, seekers need to know that the main recruiting time in Japan has never been in the fall. For those seeking a full-time, tenured university position, only a few remainopen. At this time of the year, the most common posts you’ll find are those considered “stepping stones”, the limited-term contracts for adjunct or part-time positions, and there are plentyof these.
A note to jobseekers: Be sure to bring copies of your CV/résumé with you. (If you also bring these on a USB key, even better). Though it is true that you would ideally want to adjust your résumé and cover letterfor each job, there’s no time for that at the conference. Instead, you get a face-to-face opportunity that can’t be beat. Even if you don’t get the job, the contact and experience of talking with the recruiters, formally and informally, is well worth it.
I look forward to seeing you at theJob Information Center room at the upcoming JALT conference.
Douglas Meyer,
Conference JIC coordinator