“If I were to say it’s easy, I would be lying”: A HOD's Honest Take on International Teacher Recruitment
Ten years of teaching. Three countries. Over 100 job applications. In this candid conversation with Totally Teach, Precious Kubeka - now Head of Department for STEM at a top-tier international school in China - pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to land (and keep) an international teaching job.
Meet Precious
Precious Kubeka started her career teaching science and geography in South Africa. A decade later, she's Head of Department for STEM at a prestigious international school in China, having built her international career through school posts in Taiwan, where she also earned her first leadership role.
Along the way, she picked up a Bachelor of Education, a Bachelor of Science Honours in Energy Studies, and a Master of Science in Renewable Energies. She describes her journey simply:
"Teaching is not just a job, it's a calling."
We sat down with her to talk about the realities of the international teacher job market - the applications, the silence, the wins, and what she'd change if she could redesign the whole system.
We believe conversations like this one matter - talking directly to the people living the international recruitment process, from teachers to schools. This helps us understand what works, and what doesn't, and how something we're working on can help.
The Numbers Behind the Job Hunt
For international teachers, applying for jobs can sometimes feel like a numbers game. Precious knows that feeling well when reflecting on how many applications she made during a job hunt,
she revealed:
"I'd say over 100. It's a lot. There was a time where I was applying every single week, and I had a target of the number of applications that I would send per day."
And the biggest challenge wasn't necessarily rejection - it was silence.
"For a majority of those applications, you don't even hear back from the recruiters, but you just keep on going, applying and applying and applying until you land your dream job."
She estimates she heard back from around 40% of the schools she applied to - and most of that 40% were rejections. When a response did come, it was rarely more than:
"Just a vague email to say that we've decided to move on with other candidates."
What she wanted wasn't a long explanation, just something specific.
"I would really appreciate it if they would tell us exactly what went wrong, what we could improve, so that the recruitment process could be easier for us in future."
Without that feedback, the silence took a toll.
"It made me feel like there was something that I was doing really wrong. And I didn't know what it was, and I didn't have direction. I felt directionless."
In the absence of feedback from schools, Precious found another way forward: talking to people who'd been through it before.
"Talking to people and finding yourself a mentor, finding somebody who's been in the international space for a very long time, it really helps."
We see this often. We understand that schools rarely have the capacity to give individual feedback to every applicant, but it can leave teachers guessing at what to change. A trusted mentor or colleague reviewing your CV can close that gap fast.
Sometimes Rejection Isn't Really Rejection
One of the most revealing stories from Precious's career came from her time in Taiwan. There was a school she desperately wanted to work for, and she applied repeatedly.
"Semester after semester. And I kept on getting rejected until I sent the last application."Eventually, the school hired her. The reason had nothing to do with her application.
"I was qualified for all of the times that I applied to that school, but it was the timing."
The school simply hadn't had the right opening for her experience and qualifications - until it did.
"Once that opportunity opened up, immediately I got a response back from the school, I got an interview, I got hired in two weeks."
It's a useful reminder that a rejected application doesn't mean an unsuitable teacher - and a detail that matters for how schools and recruiters communicate rejection. As Precious put it, sometimes a candidate just needs to hear:
"There's nothing wrong with you or your application. It's just time and place."
Beyond the CV
Now that Precious is a HOD, she's experienced recruitment from the other side of the desk too. Asked what a hiring school leader actually notices first, her answer was immediate:
"Professional overview or professional summary, the one that is right at the very top. Years of experience. Skills and qualifications. That's all they see."
It's a point we hear again and again in conversations like this one - even highly experienced teachers need to make their value clear immediately, or risk being overlooked.
But being qualified isn't always enough. You also need to present yourself in a way that lets the school see the fit.
"Sometimes you are qualified for that job, but you're not presenting yourself in a way that they want to see."
Precious doesn't believe recruitment should stop at a CV at all.
"A person's work is not in a CV. It's an entire portfolio. It's a collection of work that the person has done in their lives."
She encourages teachers to actively document their practice - lesson plans, teaching materials, classroom videos - and build it into something schools can actually see.
"Take short videos of yourself teaching in the classroom. Make a compilation of those so that you can submit them in your personal portfolio."
She specifically highlighted the value of introduction videos:
"The introduction video is very important - even more important than the demo video. You have one minute to give a really good impression. If the introduction video is bad, they might not even look at your teaching demo."
It's a point that comes up in almost every one of these conversations: it's genuinely hard to capture a true impression of yourself in a two-page PDF. A short video communicates far more in those crucial early stages - think of it as your elevator pitch.
Should AI Be Part of Recruitment?
Despite the rapid rise in recruitment technology, Precious is cautious about relying too heavily on automated systems. Her concern is that keyword-based filters can exclude strong candidates simply because they didn't use the exact wording a system is scanning for.
"Sometimes they filter out the best candidates because they didn't use specific wording in their CVs."
But she doesn't see technology and human recruitment as opposites -just something that needs combining properly.
"If candidates could provide a full profile of themselves: a CV, a video, a teaching demonstration, or a portfolio."
That kind of profile gives recruiters more ways to understand a candidate without manually working through every application from scratch - technology handling scale, while the human element still does the understanding.
"Transparency."
Asked what makes a job advert trustworthy enough to apply to, Precious answered with one word: transparency. And for her, that goes well beyond salary.
"If it's transparency regarding salaries, housing, visa, holidays, a lot of things, and also timelines."
Timelines matter more for international teachers than most, given how tightly the school calendar runs.
"As international teachers, timing is really important for us. If you're applying to a job in April and you haven't heard back in July, it could be your dream job, but you might end up settling for another job because the timeline wasn't specific."
She appreciates recruiters who set expectations clearly from the start:
"If you don't hear from us in two weeks, consider yourself unsuccessful; then you know that you can move on and apply elsewhere."
It's not about guaranteeing a positive outcome. It's about knowing where you stand.
Teachers Need to Interview Schools Too
Recruitment isn't only about whether a school wants a teacher - the teacher needs to decide if the school is right for them too. Precious says there are a few things she'd always want answered before accepting a position: how big the classes really are, what the actual workload looks like beyond what's discussed in the interview, and how the school supports teachers around discipline and learning barriers.
"In the interview process, you kind of agree on certain things. But then when you get to the school, there's additional responsibility."
For international teachers relocating across countries, signing a contract isn't just accepting a job - it's choosing a new environment to live in. That makes transparency on both sides essential.
Building a Career, Not Just a Next Job
One of the biggest themes running through Precious's story is that international teaching is a long-term career, not a series of jobs. When she first moved to Taiwan, she had a plan.
"I knew that I wasn't going to go just for a holiday. I wanted to work, I wanted to make a name for myself."
She built experience deliberately, volunteered for projects, and made herself visible before she had the title to match.
"You need to be visible. People need to know you. People need to see you... it's almost doing the job without the title first."
That mindset - and the qualifications she kept adding along the way - are part of why opportunities kept opening up, even when no school ever directly asked about her master's degree.
"What I've noticed is that after I've gotten that qualification, the number of opportunities that were open suddenly increased. You might not get asked about them, but they are going to make a difference in the kind of opportunities that you get."
Her advice to teachers earlier in that journey is straightforward:
"Work hard, continue working hard, never lose hope, and just continue doing what you're doing, and do it to the best of your ability. You are going to eventually reap the rewards."
Where Is International Recruitment Headed?
Looking ahead, Precious sees a market that increasingly rewards specialisation over generalist experience.
"Five years ago, in China, you just needed to have any degree and a certificate. But now it needs to be specialised. You need to work on honing your skills in a specific discipline. You really need a qualification to prove that you can teach that subject."
Her advice to teachers building a long-term international career:
"Get your education up, and focus on a specific learning area or subject. It's going to ensure that they have a job for a very long time."
Precious's story is, in many ways, the story we hear again and again from international teachers- real talent, genuine resilience and a passion for education, trying to navigate a recruitment process that doesn't always work well for either side. Teachers want feedback instead of silence. They want transparency. And they want the chance to find a school that's genuinely right for them, not just the next available vacancy. Schools, meanwhile, need to manage huge volumes of applications and still find teachers who genuinely fit.
This is exactly why we've been prioritising conversations like this one - with teachers, and with the school leaders on the other side of the hiring table - before building anything. It's those perspectives, gathered from people actually living this process, that have shaped what we're building next.
This article only captures part of the conversation. In the full interview, Precious talks openly about her journey from South Africa to Taiwan and China, building her STEM career, gaining leadership experience, dealing with rejection, and what she believes international teacher recruitment will look like in the years ahead.
Watch the full interview on the Totally Teach YouTube channel @Totally-Teach
And if you're an international teacher, keep an eye on Totally Teach. We're building a new way to match international teachers and schools. Join the Early Access List to be among the first to find out what's coming:
https://149305307.hs-sites-eu1.com/totally-teach-ttm-early-access-lp
Coming soon!
Many thanks to Precious for her valuable participation in this interview.