documents, documents, documents

The number of documents needed to apply for a university job keeps on multiplying. My first-ever uni job at Sookmyung Women's University's unigweon (university hagweon) didn't require so much paperasse. Now, though, just to get through the first round of university job application, you have to have the following, all nicely bundled, in many cases, as a single, multi-page PDF (with the pages in order, no less):

1. your résumé (yes, I accent résumé the French way)
2. a selfie
3. your old school transcripts (undergrad & grad)
4. a copy of your passport (2 pages)
5. a copy of your alien-residence card (2 sides)
6. scanned copies of your diplomas (undergrad & grad)
7. copies of letters of recommendation
8. copies of your certificates of employment (경력증명서, all jobs)
9. a copy of a recent "health report"
10. a copy of a local and/or FBI criminal background check

I think a lot of this is in response to the bad reputation that many foreign English "teachers" have had over the years. Koreans aren't stupid: They can often suss out who knows what they're doing, and when a teacher, in talking about grammar, says something vague and dodgy like That sounds strange or That's awkward or That's not natural English or We just don't talk that way or That's not how we organize essays instead of providing actual reasons not to write or speak a certain way, that's a red flag. Get enough ersatz foreign "teachers" acting that way, speaking that vaguely, and the collective reputation of those teachers goes down. And really, EFL teachers' prestige has never been high.

At the university level, I think, schools are doing their best to screen out the duds. At first, universities started requiring Master's degrees in any subject. These days, many universities are stricter and require either a Master's in a relevant subject (some branch of linguistics) or an internationally recognized certification (CELTA, etc.). I should probably take the short CELTA course and get a CELTA certification; as things stand, all I have is a note on my undergrad transcript saying that I did go through the certification program to become a foreign-language teacher (for French).

I think the above list covers what you need for the initial round of hiring. But that's only the first round. If you make it into the next round, universities start requiring originals and "official" versions of certain documents:

1. original school transcripts in sealed envelopes
2. original, apostilled diplomas (no longer enough to have just the diploma)
3. an apostilled criminal background check

So I'm scrambling to get a pile of documents together for the first round of applications. Thus far, I'm not seeing any university opportunities appropriate to my location (Seoul). I can't really afford to move to another city or even to another location in Seoul: Doing so means losing my W10 million rental deposit. But within Seoul, I'm willing to commute far even if it's inconvenient to do so. And the wave of job ads is coming.

Unfortunately, I'm far from having all of my shit together. Official, sealed transcripts are on the way. I'm sending my diplomas off to be apostilled tomorrow, and I'm sending the FBI my fingerprints so I can get a background check done. When I get my FBI background check (either snail-mailed or as an official PDF... probably snail-mailed), I'll get that apostilled as well. Everything is working on a different timetable, which is frustrating and a little confusing. I got my first employment certificate today from my most recent company (the Golden Goose); that actually took some back-and-forth with the company's main office and my boss; the first certificate they'd sent me had the wrong team/department name on it as well as the wrong employment dates. But when I pointed this out (with confirmation by my ex-boss), the main office gamely rewrote the information au juste and sent it to me, so that's fine. As for my other employment certificates... there's ostensibly a way to get them online, but from what I see, the campus websites are an unusable mess. I've seen that some unis, like Sookmyung, have automatic machines on campus where you can punch in (some sort of) personal information and get the desired certificate. We'll see whether I can do that by physically visiting these campuses. I'm not looking forward to Dongguk, which sits on a large hill and requires a bit of huffing and puffing to reach. And the weather's not getting any cooler.

So for first-round documents, if we did this as a checklist, I have:

✓ résumé
✓ a selfie
✓ scans of school transcripts (undergrad & grad)
✓ a copy of my passport (2 pages)
✓ a copy of my alien-residence card (2 sides)

✓ scanned copies of my diplomas (undergrad & grad)

☐ copies of letters of recommendation (working on it)

☐ copies of certificates of employment (I have one so far)

☐ a copy of a recent "health report" (coming soon)

☐ a copy of a local and/or FBI criminal background check (coming in a few weeks)

I have one letter of recommendation and one certificate of employment. I need to re-ask my ex-boss for the other letter of recommendation. I'll try to get two more certificates of employment tomorrow. If I have time, I'll visit my local doc for a "health report." I'm mailing off my diplomas to be apostilled tomorrow and also mailing off my fingerprints to get the FBI criminal background check. All of this is going to take weeks, and I fear I'm going to be missing a lot of opportunities.

Some commenters suggested just submitting whatever I have on hand, but many unis—again, in the spirit of strictness—now say they will automatically disqualify any application package that comes in incomplete and/or out of order (many colleges now specify the order in which to assemble your multi-page PDF). I can totally understand that: It makes going through a pile of applications a lot easier when you know you can just throw some away outright.

No lack of shit to do.

Oh, yeah—second-round rigamarole includes teaching a sample lesson.