This is a safe space, so you can say it: you don’t like teaching.
Or maybe you do, or some parts of it, at least. Maybe you don’t see yourself teaching in Vietnam for the rest of your life, and you’re getting a little worried about how an extended break from your desired field in Saigon is going to look on your resume.
Not to worry! We’ve got your back.
It may not seem that way, but as a teacher you’re accruing a number of useful skills that will help you succeed in these and other fields, should you choose to make the leap.
A word about money: We assume a typical, full-time teaching salary is about US$1,000. Yours may differ, but this is the figure we reference when we say “typical teaching salary” when we talk about money.
Media Industry
Ho Chi Minh City hosts a healthy number of publications and outlets, like Saigoneer, trendy events-and-culture publication AnyArena and AsiaLIFE Magazine as well as your own City Pass Guide. These publications regularly buy work from freelancers and, occasionally, hire for a variety of roles, like creating written or visual content, selling advertising or building websites.
A teacher looking for an escape ladder from the classroom might find one dangling from one of these media platforms.
If you’re unbothered by potentially lower pay, media outlets are a great place to look—especially if you have talents as a writer or videographer.
How your teaching skills are suited to this industry: Ever been in a classroom and felt like your lesson was going nowhere? Did you keep your cool or, better yet, shift your teaching or lesson to get more engagement from your students? Congrats, you’ve exercised a positive response criticism, a key to this industry.
Like the students who are subtly signalling their poor assessment of your teaching through their indifference, a perspective editor will sure have something to say about the first draft of the story you submit or the footage you offer. Vietcetera videographer Brett Hamilton said the ability to be evaluated and take that in a mature way will be a strength for someone vying for a spot in the media industry.
How’s the money: Entry level positions may fall within the US$500 to US$1,000 range. Expect to make something comparable to a typical teacher wage, but likely less. Hamilton notes the wage differences are less pronounced when you take into account the non-classroom time a teacher spends grading, designing lessons, etc.
How you get in: If you don’t have a portfolio of relevant work—published work if you’re aiming to be a writer, or sold pictures if you’re shooting to be a photographer—Hamilton said freelancing is the best place to start. Ask around if a publication you’d like to work for is hiring for a specific task, and don’t be afraid to take work for small fees. Focus on building a reputation for output, he said. Also, network like it’s your job. Go out and meet people.
Project Management
For those who are seeking an exit from teaching to doing something else, there are certain kinds of work that a teacher does that fall into the project manager’s skillset.
The responsibilities of a project manager can vary—this is a position that can be responsible for anything from leading a team of people who will create new software to managing a construction site at an office renovation—but it has one things in common: something new that a firm does not already have has to be created in an organised manner.
Let’s say you’ve been asked to organise an English club at your school. You had to think about basics like when and how often the club will meet, and also more in depth items like how will the club be led as well as how will you make students want to come to this meeting. This is a type of a project that you’ve managed, and it may be something you can bring into discussion with an interviewer when you go for a project manager opening.
Look for places in your current position when you’ve been asked to do something exceptional or out of the ordinary, something preferably that has defined goals like recruiting a certain number of students. Often teaching lacks meaningful markers for success, and you may have to get creative in finding or creating opportunities to show that for yourself.
How your teaching skills are suited to this industry: Have you ever been asked to review new curriculum and design a teaching strategy for yourself and other teachers? Or maybe you’ve been asked to organise a school festival. These are projects that you’ve managed, and you’re working as a project manager.
Seeing how your teaching skills will fit into a business environment outside of a classroom requires some creative work. Only of what you’re doing, teaching mirrors work that would happen in a corporate environment in Saigon, so business consultant Carsten Ley said seek opportunities to involve yourself in other projects with defined outcomes. After all “[w]hat is a project, right? If you say you’re an English teacher in a school and they want to write a new curriculum or open a new school, you’re already a project manager,” he said. Look for places where you’re doing something that’s not specifically your job to build these new skills.
How’s the money: The salary in an entry level business position is 100 to 150 percent of what a typical teaching salary would be, according to Ley.
How you get in: “The first thing is how do you build your CV. I mean, you don’t put ‘teacher’ directly in your CV, that’s a little bit far from business,” Ley said. Instead, he suggests identifying projects that you’ve been involved in that involve defined goals, like recruiting and retaining new students.
A business degree and other certification will help you land a job in this field, but Ley said these are less than strict requirements in our particular job market. “The good thing about hiring in Vietnam is that the hiring is not so formal,” Ley said. “They look more to experience than degrees.” Look for ways to phrase your teaching skills as abilities to manage projects and communicate with others to make you more attractive for your desired position. Ley said Saigon’s startup-rich business ecosystem lends itself well to those who are trying to work themselves into a new discipline or field.
Recruiting
Teaching may not be your thing, but maybe you’re incredibly skilled at connecting with the students and you generally have an easy time talking to others.
Corporate recruiting may be for you.
It can be difficult for companies to find and hire the right candidates, so they regularly contract out this work to individuals who proactively recruit prospective hirees for them. Recruiters are generally paid per successful hire; an entry level one can expect to make about a tenth of the salary of the hire as their fee.
This is an entry level fee. An experienced recruiter can command a higher rate, but also don’t be afraid to formalise your service and make the motions of an official service, including getting your own office and an email address from something other than Gmail. It’s not unheard of for companies to refuse paying above the entry level rate because you don’t have your own physical office or a website. This is an industry where these kinds of investments may pay dividends as a freelancers.
How your teaching skills are suited to this industry: You can connect with learners and have likely spent a lot of time on the computer planning lessons (or on Facebook. It’s cool, we won’t tell). Great! Freelance recruiter Karol Czajkowski (“chai-koff-ski”) said much of his recruiting work is done on social media and remotely, so you’ll be doing more of that if you decide to make the switch. Also, if you’re a teacher, you’ve probably thought intensively about how to take a complicated grammar topic and turn it into a digestible, learner-friendly lesson. Your work is similar as a recruiter, only you’re explaining an unfamiliar position to a candidate.
Czajkowski said the biggest difference between this kind of work and teaching is the need to sell. This is a position that needs to persuade a human resources executive that he or she is the right person to help them hire. Once they’ve secured the assignment, the recruiter would also need to convince a prospective hire to, first, talk to and them and, second, take a job they’re probably unaware of and not looking for.
How’s the money: Recruiters are paid a percentage of the hire’s salary. A fair amount for someone who’s never done this kind of work is 10 percent of the hire’s salary, Czajkowski said. A more active recruiter may be able to replace their salary quicker, but it depends on the frequency and size of the employee’s pay.
How you get in: The freelance job board UpWork is a favorite resource of Czajkowski’s. Enterprising recruiters can also write to the hiring manager of a company and seek opportunities that way.
Teach online
You like teaching, you really do. But you’ve never looked good in a collar and tie. And getting up in the morning has never been for you.
The has to be way to just teach—do the rewarding, fun work of watching people learn something new—without having to deal with all the rest, right?
Consider teaching online.
A plethora of services like 97 Kid, Topica Native and VIPKID have emerged over the years to link teachers with students over the internet. The pay per hour for these kinds of services starts about US$10 but can go as high as US$20, which is comparable to what you’d make teaching inside a Vietnamese classroom. There are a handful of online educational services that pay as much as US$30 per hour for an educator, so do your homework (we do not apologise for this pun).
Because you can do this work anywhere, you can also take it with you when you holiday or move to a new country. Students online are just going to be looking for a friendly teacher. These services typically allow you to select your own hours, but have a minimum per week hourly commitment that a teacher must meet.
Some services include student evaluations via rating systems for pupils to evaluate their teachers; educators who earn a higher score from their learners usually get a bump in their pay.
How your teaching skills are suited to this industry: This is a teaching position, so we’ve probably answered this question already.
How’s the money: Teaching online offers its employees the ability to select their own hours as long as they meet a minimum hourly commitment. Brit Isbell, an American national temporarily living in Vietnam who works at 97 Kid, said it wouldn’t be hard to replace a typical teacher's’ salary. He makes about US$20 per hour.
How you get in: As in many cases, Google is your friend here. Websites for these services will have easy-to-follow web interfaces for applicants to get you started teaching remotely before you can say “mornings off”.
One last note: in the course of our reporting, we’ve learned that some online teaching companies prefer foreign teachers located in the US or another western nation due to a perception that internet infrastructure in the developing world (read: Vietnam) won’t be reliable enough for a remote employee to be consistently available. Know that prospectives look better if they present themselves with an address other than one here.