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Hiring Process Getting Started
2) A Complete Resume: Resumes should show the entire work history of the applicant, and should be as detailed as possible to show what training and experience has been gained in each position. Particularly, teaching/tutoring experience should be highlighted, as well as any other experience the applicant has with children, no matter how small. Applicants should also detail any travel experiences they have had, especially extended stays overseas. Phone numbers must be included and current as TEIK will conduct an informal interview by phone to determine their suitability prior to submitting the applicant to prospective schools.
3) A Recent Photo: Applicants must be aware that their photos are very important to Korean employers as this is the first and often only impression they will get of them. Photos should represent how one would look if one were actually going in for a job interview. Photos should be a smiling head shot that show the face clearly.
4) Screening: All applicants are initially screened by TEIK for suitability for working in Korea. In order to obtain an E2 teaching visa one must be a native English speaker (USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ or S. Africa) and one must also have a 4 year degree (or equivalent 3 year degree in the UK) from an accredited university from an English speaking country. Factors considered are the applicant's age (schools usually prefer teachers under 40 years of age), educational background and work history. If the application passes the first screening, they are called for a phone interview by TEIK. This is not an official job interview, but rather an assessment by TEIK of the applicant's suitability for being placed in one of our schools. The applicant's attitude and demeanor are carefully assessed, as well as how likely they will be able to adapt to moving to and working in a new cultural environment.
If the applicant successfully passes the phone/SKYPE interview by TEIK, we then submit the teachers profile a) to schools that have positions that match the applicants specified criteria, or b) to the specified employer in the event the applicant applied for a specific job. Applicants cannot always be matched with a position right away as jobs matching their specified criteria may not be immediately available. Applicants who are very open to location and student age can usually be place very quickly, while applicants who want a specific city or age group can take longer to place. Once the applicant has been matched to a school, employers usually decide within a day whether or not they want to proceed to a phone interview.
5) Job Interviews: If the employer informs us at TEIK that the applicant is a suitable candidate for their available position, we then may arrange an interview. The interview can be done over the phone in cases where the applicant is not in the country. One interview is almost always enough and some schools will take our recommendation in place of an interview. Applicants should understand that the phone interview will not be a long rigorous drill-session as it most often is when applying for a job in one's home country. In most cases, the interviewer will only ask a couple questions about the teacher's previous experience, and in many cases, may not even ask any pointed questions at all. Applicants need to be aware that by the time a school requests the interview, they have already learned most of what they need to know from the applicant's resume, photograph, and TEIK’s recommendation and that they are they are impressed enough by what they see to hire the applicant.
More often than not, the interview is really just a formality to allow the teacher to ask any questions they may have about the school, and not the other way around. As long as the teacher speaks clearly and has a positive attitude, the job is usually already theirs. Once interviews have been completed, the employer will most always inform us of their decision within a day or two, and we in turn inform the applicant of the results immediately.
6. Sign the Contract: Employers will then, through TEIK, offer a successful applicant a contract. We at TEIK review all contracts prior to sending them to ensure that they include all the benefits that our teachers deserve, as well as to ensure that they conform to Korean law. When we are satisfied, we send the contract to the teacher who must sign it and send it back to us, along with a scan of the signed page. This completes the hiring process and we then move on to apply for a work visa for the new employee from Korean Immigration and the process to obtain an E2 visa from submitting ones documents to going to Korea takes approximately 1 month.
The Visa Process
Obtaining Your Work Visa: Once a contract is agreed to and signed by our applicant, the next step in the process is to gather all of the documents listed below and send them to TEIK so that we may obtain an E-2 visa work permit from Korean Immigration. Up to this point, even though the school has extended an offer of employment and the applicant has accepted and signed the contract, the teacher is not officially an employee. Any agreements are only binding subsequent to the applicant being approved for a work visa from Korean Immigration. TEIK offers an optional visa service to process the E2 multiple entry visa for you for a small fee, which includes all international & domestic over-night charges, visa application fees, handling fees & taxes. By using TEIK's optional visa service you can relax and just send us your documents and we will check to make sure all of yor documents have been done correctly and if we miss any mistake in your documents we will pay to have what ever document overnighted to Korea. You can do the E2 visa process on your own, but if you make a mistake and have to send another document to Korea, then it will have been about the same price as using our optional visa service.
Along with documents that the school will be able to obtain themselves, we will need to have from the applicant the following documents to apply for the work visa:
1. One set of the applicants sealed & stamped* university transcripts.
2. The applicants original university degree (will be returned upon arrival in Korea). & a notarized photocopy of the diploma with apostille notarization [this is to obtain your alien registration card after arriving in Korea [effective 09.01.10]
3. Three copies of the original contract** signed by the applicant, but not dated.
4. Applicants passport (will be returned before departure after the visa is stamped in the passport)
5. A full resume with correct mailing address and phone number.
6. A recent passport-size color photos.
7. One must now have [1]*criminal background check* (a local county criminal background check is NOT acceptable). [NOTE: as of 01.01.2011 all CBC's must be nationwide (Click here to find out how to apply for a) FBI check for US Citizens [can take up to 12 weeks] and (Click here to find out how to apply for a) RCMP check for Canadians. Updated on 07.20.10] State wide Apostille notarized CBC's will only be accepted until 09.01.2010. Every state only has one Apostille that can notarize your police background check.
A DUI will prevent you from obtaining an E2 visa and any violent crime or drug offenses will also prevent you from obtaining an E2 visa as well.
8. Completed health questionnaire (I will email it to you and it has 3 questions: are you a drug addict, an alcoholic or have a contagious communicable disease (HIV & TB) that poses a health threat to Koreans).
*Sealed & stamped means still in the unopened envelope from the applicants educational institute, with the university stamp or registrar signature across the back seal. If the stamp or signature is absent, or if the transcripts have been opened or otherwise tampered with in any way, Korean Immigration will not accept them. It is advisable for work visa applicants to contact the registrar's office at their university to specifically request that their transcripts be stamped as not every university automatically does this. You will need 2 sets, so we suggest obtaining 3 sets to have 1 extra set for just in case.
**The date must be left blank on both copies of the signed contract. The exact start date of the contract will be amended once the applicant arrives in Korea. With the time that it can take the applicant to gather the required visa documents and courier them to the employer, and the time that it takes for the employer to actually apply for the work visa to Korean Immigration, and the fact that the approval time can be anywhere from 5-15 business days without unforeseen delays, not to mention the time that it then would take the visa to be actually issued in the applicant's home country, it is impossible to set an exact start date at this point in the process. All contracts are one year only, and usually begin the day after the applicant arrives in Korea.
Because of the unreliable nature of regular postage delivery, all documents must be sent by registered courier. FEDEX and DHL work best in Korea. The cost is usually between thirty and forty dollars and delivery is insured and usually done within three business days. The applicant should send the documents directly to the school whose address is easily obtainable through TEIK. The visa application process in Korea usually takes about five to seven business days from the point that the school submits all the required documents to the issuance of the visa approval number.
*IMPORTANT*NEW E2 VISA REGULATIONS AS OF DECEMBER 2007 *IMPORTANT*
At the end of December in 2007 new E2 visa regulations went into effect and now the visa process is more complicated and there are more documents needed in order to process the visa, which has added about two and a half weeks onto the visa process. Before the new visa rules went into effect, to obtain an E2 visa there were two steps in the visa process.
The first step was for me to overnight all of your visa documents to Korea ([1] school contract (signed, but not dated), [2] passport, [3] original University diploma, [4] official sealed transcripts (unopened), [5] 3 passport photos, [6] visa application form (signed), and [7] have paid the visa processing fee.
The second phase was receiving an E2 visa issuance number within 7-10 business days from the Korean immigration and then I would submit the signed visa application, passport, a photocopy of the passport and a $45 dollar fee to the Korean consulate and within 3 business days they would issue a visa into the passport and then I would next-day deliver the passport and a Korea travel guide to the teacher a few days before they were to depart for Korea.
Now there are two additional new documents and an interview (all listed in detail below) that are required on top of the documents & fee listed above [1-7]).One must now have [1]
For more information on Apostille go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostille. Korea, USA, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK are all signators of this agreement. NOTE: Canada did not sign this agreement, so they can not have a document notarized by an Apostille, so Canadian teachers will have to get their criminal background check from the RCMP, which takes 4-6 months to obtain, so apply as early as possible. Apostille is also a French word which means a certification. It is commonly used in English to refer to the legalization of a document for international use under the terms of the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents. Documents which have been notarized by a notary public, and certain other documents, and then certified with a conformant Apostille are accepted for legal use in all the nations that have signed the Hague Convention. So in other words, if a country signed this agreement then any document that has the signature of a state government official (including a notary public) can be notarized by the state Apostille, then it must be recognized as a valid document in any country that has signed the agreement.
After receiving your statewide criminal background check you will have to send the document to your state Apostille with a check ($2-$20 dollars) and a letter stating why you need the document notarized and to which country this document will be being used in. You will also need to request to have the document sent to you and then send all of the requested documents to me at my home office address (440 N. Wabash Ave. #1607, Chicago, IL 60611).
One must now also have [2] *a medical questionnaire* filled out and signed by the E2 visa applicant. I will send you this form after a job has been offered to you. This questionnaire is going to ask you if you are: 1) an alcoholic 2) a drug addict or 3) have a communicable disease that poses a threat to Koreans. You will need to fill out this yes or no questionnaire and sign it. Within 90 days after arriving in Korea you will then have to have a physical and a drug test. If you fail the drug test you will not be allowed to stay in Korea, but I've been told that most schools have 90 days to submit the physical/drug test to the immigration, so if one fails the test it is possible to wait a few weeks and retake the exam, but this is highly discouraged. If you are addicted to any illegal drugs, then please do not waste my or the schools time by continuing the hiring process.
One must now also have [3] an interview at a Korean Consulate after the first phase of the visa process, but before having the visa issued, you will need to have an interview with Korean Consulate officer. We will set up the interview with the Korean Consulate by MSN video conference (if you do not live near one) or for a face to face interview if you are near a Korean Consulate.
Flight Arrangements: TEIK handles all flight arrangements and ensures that both the teacher and the school are provided with flight itineraries as soon as they are available. Reservations are normally placed once the teacher's work visa has been approved by Korean Immigration. Once the teacher confirms the return of their passport from the Korean consulate in their country with their work visa stamped in it, TEIK will have the flight ticket paid for by the private English school (public schools require the teacher to pay for the ticket and within a month of arriving they reimburse the teacher) and issued, usually in the form of an electronic ticket which is sent to the teacher's email address. The teacher must normally arrive in Korea one or two days before the start date of their contract.
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