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Landing a Public School/University Job in a Tier 1 City in China with Zero Professional Classroom Teaching Experience - Is it Possible? via /r/China

Landing a Public School/University Job in a Tier 1 City in China with Zero Professional Classroom Teaching Experience - Is it Possible?

What's up, everybody!

I'm reaching out because I've been thinking about making the move to China for a little while, but I only recently started getting serious about making the move. Apologies if all of this comes off long-winded, but I want to provide as much relevant background as possible (in order to, hopefully, avoid coming off like a total schmuck).

With my research on job opportunities in China, I stumbled across the inevitable TESL career path. At first, I was somewhat turned off by this, as I've been focusing my efforts heavily in a B2B sales job in IT staffing in the United States for the past few years, and I wanted to keep my career experience as relevant as possible.

However, after doing some research across various forums and websites, I came across an interesting phenomenon: I noticed that there were opportunities to teach English in public school/university in China for around 20-25 hours per week with minimal-to-no office hours. With that being said, my interest shifted: What if I worked in a teaching job like this for 2+ years and focused the majority of my remaining time in intense Mandarin learning and cultural immersion? In addition, I could focus on networking once I got on the ground in China and explore other non-teaching opportunities in my spare time (assuming I get my Mandarin skills where they need to be).

I love Asian culture, and I've been excited to continue to learn more about it. I've been studying Mandarin for a bit now, and a big goal of mine has been to develop enough fluency in Mandarin to focus my efforts on landing international sales jobs, whether that's in China full-time or in another World City in the US where I'm traveling back-and-forth to China to do B2B sales on an enterprise level. Of course, I love the idea of teaching and helping people grow in this area--not trying to come too self-centered and pompous.

Here's some context:

I'm a native English speaker from the United States

I'm 26 years old

I have a BSBA in Economics from a State University (ranked roughly 550 in the world, not 100 unfortunately lol)

I have around 3 years experience in a B2B sales/staffing role. This involves a heavy emphasis on communication, where I'm regularly client-facing, delivering presentations, mentoring junior sales people, and educating my clients in business meetings about the market vs what they perceive it to be.

My timeline to get to China is about 2 years from now, so I'll have roughly 5 years of solid business experience by then.

Outside of the above, I've taught swim lessons as a life guard and served as a teaching assistant in high school, but I have zero years of professional post-grad classroom teaching experience.

I will plan to obtain TESOL cert to help offset my lack of teaching experience.

I am around HSK 2 Mandarin proficiency. I plan to be level 3 or 4 by the time I get to China.

I'm planning to save up as much money as possible over the next couple years. I won't be dependent upon a comfortable salary of 15-25K RMB.

Here are my questions:

-Given my background, is it possible for me to get a public school or university teaching job in a Tier 1 City in China? I'd REALLY love to get to a place like Shanghai as soon as possible. I've read up on training centers quite a bit, where you're expected to work 40+ hours per week at odd hours, which is why I've been largely wanting to avoid them... The last thing I want to do is spend all my time in a classroom teaching kindergarten.

-Are there other non-teaching opportunities with 20-25 hour work weeks that exist and will allow me to obtain a Z Visa? Again, the big goal is a low hour work schedule. Money is not the biggest concern. The biggest concern is having plenty of time to immerse myself in the language, network, and enjoy China.

-My absolute #1 preference would be to teach Business English, as I think it'd be perfect for my background. Are there 20-25/hr work week opportunities that offer this on a Z Visa? Or do you have to have x amount of teaching experience to even break into these?

Moving Forward:

Truly appreciate all the help in advance. Love this community, and I've learned WAY more about how to navigate these complexities from the Reddit community than I could have ever dreamed. Please feel free to PM me anytime if you have common goals or just want to network.

Also, despite the devilish Chinese recruiters I've heard about (there's a lot of bad ones in the US, too), I, myself, am a recruiter in the United States, and I'm always happy to help anyone out who needs some career/resume advice in the US. Free of charge and solely as a favor, so please, feel free to PM me (especially if you have good advice).

Wes

WeChat: WesDogg

Submitted November 11, 2019 at 05:49PM by WesDogg54 via reddit https://ift.tt/2Ke0JLV

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