… and now I’m job-hunting in earnest and jfcsstrrssfgchujbgfryhgftyhgerswww. I hope this is the right place to vent about this sort of thing, but I’m feeling so incredibly stressed and frustrated because I really want to change careers (TEFL teaching is a dead end, and the conditions have got so much worse in recent years) and I know I could do a junior frontend job perfectly well — I’ve put so much with into getting good at it in my own time — but it’s beginning to dawn on me that there’s basically no way in to the industry unless you know someone who can help you get a foot in the door.
I don’t know where I’m going with this tbh — I just needed to vent somewhere — but it would be nice to hear any advice anyone can offer, or even just the lamentations of anyone with similar experiences…
Could you elaborate? I thought it was doing okay, since only so much of the demand for English teachers is satisfied by the under-qualified, under-the-table supply of failsons (as opposed to the more qualified failson supply)
So this problem may be local to Spain, but over the last fifteen years there has been a huge change in the industry, with everything consolidating into these huge, HR-driven companies. The era of small academies wasn’t perfect, but they were generally friendly, family-run places whose strategy was to deliver a good service. The new model is about getting people in and out the door, and monetizing propriety materials — which are increasingly AI-generated. Oh and pay is stagnant or worse.
There has been a change in the profile of student too — from people driven by a desire for personal enrichment and just enjoyment (no-one has the spare cash for that anymore) to people who need to pass a particular exam for work.
There’s also the timetable — split shifts every day, all but ensuring that you never see your kids. That isn’t new, but there used to be enough demand that you could piece something together as a freelance.
Thank you for elaborating.