By Sean Harris, Screening Department Manager

Hello internet people. My name is Sean and I head up the screening team here at Footprints. I deal with all of your applications and emails as they come in and am generally your first point of contact. Over the next few weeks I will be blogging about ways to be successful in the hiring process here at Footprints. I’ll be doing this for two reasons;

1. I want as many of you to be successful as possible.
2. The Dutch overlord of communications at Footprints has demanded it.

This weeks entry is entitled:

Surefire ways to make a terrible first impression

Movember at Footprints!

Footprints jumped into the Movember campaign in 2011 by donating the upper lips of all the Footprints 'bros'. Check out our progress in this video made by Tamara- a Footprints 'sista'.

Watch for our team next year... perhaps we can get more Footprints Teachers involved in this great effort to support prostate cancer research.

Check out the Footprints Movember Video On YouTube:

Footprints teacher Philip Kunz will be returning to Georgia for a second term and recently was the subject of an article in his local paper in Helena Montana.

Excerpt from article in the Helena Independent Record

Want to stay with a family in a village in a post-Soviet republic, on the frontier between Europe and Asia and in the middle of its own bumpy transition to global economy and culture? Interested in teaching English to empower youth, and do it with minimal supplies and comforts for about $300 a month?

Footprints Recruiting® is pleased to announce that a memorandum of understanding has been signed with Mr. Khalifa Al Mansoori to open a joint venture company in Abu Dhabi. The new company will be named "Footprints Recruiting - UAE."  The central focus of this company will be to serve the growing demand for English language educators in the U.A.E. and the nearby Gulf countries, including Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

Footprints Recruiting® recently had a meeting with one of our largest clients in Japan regarding their pressing need to assist the Japanese public schools with filling 75 vacancies with Assistant English Language Teachers. Due to recent events a significant number of teachers have dropped out of the program, but as the situation in Japan stabilizes there is strong desire to bring back some routine and get the country moving forward in a positive direction. Children in Japan are craving the stability of the familiar, which for many includes ESL classes. For ESL teachers this is an opportunity to support a country they admire that is recovering from a devastating blow from mother nature.

Well besides spending the lunch hour admiring the often rainy view of the North Shore Mountains, our interns get to do a little bit of everything from calling EPIK and Georgia applicants for the purpose of scheduling phone interviews, to handing out fliers about teaching ESL abroad. Occasionally, they even get to make gourmet coffee first thing in the morning to wake up some of the Placement Coordinators and put a caffeine smile on their pillow creased faces.

Over 130 Footprints teachers arrived in South Korea last month to start their public school contract with EPIK (English Program in Korea).

These teachers were placed in various locations throughout Korea ranging from Gangwon Province to Jeju Island. Our very own Scott Kim was there to meet the teachers as they arrived at the Busan airport.

Footprints teachers were greeted with a Footprints t-shirt and an arrival package. We have heard from a few of the teachers already, and they have made it safely to their school and apartment and are ready to enjoy their year abroad! We wish all of the teachers in Korea a wonderful year to enjoy everything Korea has to offer!

Footprints Recruiting ® let out a huge sigh of relief today as the last unaccounted for former Japanese intern sent back an email to confirm that both she and her family were safe. Despite surviving the terrifying earthquake that struck off the northeastern coast of Japan on Friday, the emotional toll for the survivors is evident. Former Footprints intern Saori, currently back in Tokyo, recalls the chaos that ensued shortly after the enormous quake “it was the first REAL evacuation of my life, even though all Japanese have had evacuation drills many times…all my family are fine so far, but we still feel the earthquake at short intervals, I cannot believe what has gone on in Japan”.

Several Footprints Teachers were featured in this article by the New York Times. The article offers a realistic view of teaching in Georgia and the challenges and benefits of the program as it continues to grow.

Lisa Maiorello, a teacher from Washington DC, who was placed to teach in Georgia by Footprints is having the time of her life.  The BBC story talks about the excitement of teaching as the first foreign teacher in school number 34.

On December 17, 2010, Ben Glickman, co-owner of Footprints, met with the Dimitri Shashkini, Minister of Education and Science of Georgia to sign a contract to recruit 1500 teachers for the Teach and Learn in Georgia program.

A Memorandum of Cooperation was signed between the Georgian Ministry of Education and Science (MES) Dimitri Shashkin and Canadian company Footprints Recruiting®.

Georgia, an emerging democracy in the South Caucasus, has embarked on an ambitious program to staff public schools with 1,000 native English speaking teachers by the end of 2010.

As the first state sponsored ESL program in Eastern Europe, this is a top priority for President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government to prepare Georgian youth to take part in the global economy.

Ben Glickman, co-founder of Footprints Recruiting, flew to Georgia to meet with the Ministry of Education and enter into a contract to recruit a minimum of 500 teachers.  This is a major project for Footprints Recruiting and it is a landmark step for the country of Georgia in stepping forward to bring a new level of English language proficiency to the people of Georgia.  The following is an excerpt from the press conference that followed the signing of the landmark deal.

On May 17, 2010, Ben Glickman arrived in Georgia to meet with the Ministry of Education and Science to sign a landmark agreement that would see 500 English teachers to be recruited for the Georgian Ministry of Education.  Read the statement from the Georgia Ministry of Education:

With recent cut backs and teacher redundancies in California, Ben Glickman of Footprints Recruiting recently went to Education Departments in California to tell California teachers that we have teaching jobs for them.

Just hours before the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, the official torch run wound its way through the streets of Gastown in Vancouver before lighting the cauldron to start the games.

At around 9am on February 12th, Footprints staff took a moment to go downstairs to see the torch pass right by our front door.  We cheered on as the flame going past displaying our national colours. Currently in the office we represent six different nations with staff from Canada, US, China, Korea and our current interns from Japan and Switzerland.

This is a great interview with Ben Glickman on a CBC radio program called The Link.

In August, Ben Glickman interviewed with Nina Lex of the National Post on a story she wrote about a growing number of Canadians who were seeking work as teachers abroad in light of the dim prospect of getting employment upon graduation. 

Here is an excerpt from that article:

TORONTO -- A growing number of recent graduates from Canadian universities are becoming English teachers overseas, discouraged by a tight job market during Canada's deepest recession in decades.

Toronto Star - Ben Glickman, co-owner of the Vancouver based company Footprints Recruiting Inc., one of the largest suppliers of ESL teachers to Asia, signed an recruiting contract with Disney English Language Center in Shanghai, China.

Disney English Language Centers are part of The Walt Disney Company and are sure to spread throughout China quickly.

JoongAng Daily - Alexis Cuperus, an American living in Korea, says she won’t be going home this year, and maybe not the next year either.

TWITTER - Footprints joined TWITTER on March 17th, 2009, and is looking to create a profile that will provide advice, inspiration and guidance to teachers worldwide. 

We aim to provide information information through tweeting in the following areas:

• esl teaching jobs worldwide.
• events worldwide that relate to teaching English.
• updates on Footprints and what is happening with the company and our fantastic staff.

Wikipedia, one of the worlds largest online encyclopedias of information has a listing of Footprints Recruiting.

Check out more information about Footprints Recruiting here on Wikipedia or here on our own website.

Footprints on Facebook

Footprints Recruiting offers teachers opportunities to network in a variety of spaces and they are using the powerful social networking platform of Facebook to help their teachers connect worldwide.

Check out our Facebook presence to see what we are up to now.

Asian Pacific Post - A Vancouver-based company is looking for hundreds of teachers to begin a class act in Taiwan.

Footprints Recruiting is planning to cash in on the shift by the Taiwanese government towards the use of native English speaking teachers in classrooms around the country.

Asian Pacific Post - Taiwanese authorities are planning to work with Canada to dismantle a Vancouver-based drug trafficking operation they say was run by an English language tutor from B.C. who is now facing trial before a court in Taipei.

The Vancouver Province - Inmate 6071 at Taipei Prison's drug treatment unit is a 29-year-old English teacher from Port Moody who's making use of the long days before his sentencing by learning Mandarin.

Footprints is the leading supplier of teachers to public schools in South Korea.

When you go overseas to teach in public schools it is nice to know you are going to be part of a community. It's also nice to know that you are going with the largest supplier of teachers to public schools in South Korea.  Footprints has been the largest supplier of teachers to public schools in South Korea since 2003.