BootsnAll Travel Community

I've run across a few ESL and other volunteering applications that want a photo with your resume. Is there a reason for this? Nowhere does it mention it needs to be a visa-sized photo. Just seems kind of odd... wondering if anyone knows why they do this...

I think in some countries it's just common to include a picture with a resume. It's standard in South Korea. What countries were the applications for?

I've heard this as well, and I don't doubt that it may be standard in some places.

Though given what I know and have read about the field of EFL, I think plenty of employers do just want to know what applicants look like. Sometimes they want someone who looks a certain way - I'm definitely not saying it's alright, just that it happens.

quote:

Sometimes they want someone who looks a certain way - I'm definitely not saying it's alright, just that it happens.

Bingo. Could be skin color, age, weight, gender, or just a general "look." The motives are rarely good, which is why many places ban the practice.

If you look through international help wanted ads you will find many that state that they are looking for a man or a women or only a specific age group. Many countries consider your age in the work visa process.

Unfortunately, these are rather normal considerations.

That's interesting. I've never heard of this before. The countries that I'm looking at are all in South America (Chile, Argentina, Ecuador). What kind of picture do they want? A headshot? In business clothes?

When applying for an English teaching job here in Korea, I was told that a passport-type, professional-looking (ie, business clothes) would be best. But that it might also help to include a more casual picture of me with kids, to show that I had experience with children (since that's who I was applying to teach).

In my last job in the states, I got to see a lot of resumes from international PhD applicants, mostly from Asia. The majority of them included a picture, usually a passport head shot in business clothes. Hope that helps.

If you can, I'd say ask the schools if they have any specific requirements for the photo. Hopefully a general question will get something out of them without directly saying "why do you want a photo and what should I wear?"

I've seen ads that specify formal attire or something, but how formally teachers are expected to dress probably varies - in some places it might seem unusual for an EFL teacher to dress too formally. I suppose if you're going to have photos taken though it makes sense to look fairly formal, well presented etc.

I have heard that many organizations that ask for photos are doing so because they really want to know who would be coming to teach there and they have preferences for race, age, gender, and nationality. I have heard this from an African American friend of mine who wanted to teach and had a very blatant conversation with the organzition in Korea, but I have heard this practice isn't that uncommon.

The school I worked at in Japan required pictures and I'd always assumed it was for racial screening or something along those lines. Later, when I got into management and became privy to more information, I found out more about it. It wasn't actually racially motivated; they just wanted a general idea of what the person looked like. The few times I saw the pictures used against any applicant was when the person just sort of gave people the creeps -- nothing as tangible as race, age, etc.

In other places, they look for other things. When I was somewhat far along for getting a job in Oman, I had to send a photo for my visa. I was told to get a haircut and send another (they could see the tip of my pony tail sticking out from behind my head -- apparently long hair on men is not acceptable there).

Having pictures as part of a resume is common in other parts of the world.

I agree with a few of the previous posters - I don't really think that the issue is racism.

I do think they want some sense of what the person is like - are you smiling, frowning, did you send a professional photo or something inappropriate?

Everything reveals something and it is just another piece of the puzzle. You would be quite surprised what people will send! I even looked at a resume once where the contact email address was something like "hotsex69@hotmail.com"!!! How appropriate is that?

I worked at a college once where they wished they had asked for a current photo. The woman they hired for the teaching position was hugely obsese (is it proper to say that?) - and it was an important issue as the campus was quite hilly, classes were often on the 5th or 6th floor with NO elevators and you sometimes had only ten minutes to get from one classroom to another. So . . . down five flights of stairs, down the hill, up another hill, up five flights of stairs - she just couldn't do it.

Another issue altogether as to if the school should have accommodated her with first floor classrooms (which didn't exist - the first couple floors were always offices).

But - it just didn't work out and this woman had quit an excellent job in the USA, sold her house, moved overseas - to take a job that just wasn't appropriate for her. Needless to say - for such a major move across the globe she should have asked more questions - given her physical health situation.

Just because we do it one way in the West - doesn't mean it is always the BEST way - or if someone does it differently elsewhere doesn't always mean they have evil motives.

My post may have been too sweeping - and I know Haci Richard and Tedkarma have more extensive experience than me, so their opinions and experience in that regard are more valuable than mine (I don't know the others! so your opinions might be more valuable than mine too...).

I would say though that I certainly don't just automatically think that something is better because it's done that way in the west - and I've heard that in Germany, for example, it's typical for any cv to have a picture, so it's not as if asking for a photo is unique in a certain part of the world or only happens "out of the west". I think that it is human nature to be influenced by someone's appearance, and for an in person hire, the interviewer sees them at the interview anyway.

There are a lot of "questionable" things that go on in efl, and while it is certainly fair to say that people's motives are not always evil in asking for a picture, I think it's equally fair to say that for some efl employers, looks may play a larger role than one might expect. I'm sure this is a factor in many fields (not just efl), in many (or all) countries...but it's obviously something that's hard to objectively "measure".

Hello guys.........

This is maybe more of a question than a comment.......I've heard from a few people that it can be hard to get TEFL work in some Islamic countries if you wear a headscarf. (Yes I know that sounds a bit crazy, but friends of mine from Egypt, Turkey, etc have had to leave non-TEFL studies/jobs because of wanting to wear a headscarf, so....?). Obviously this would be picked up on a photo and you could then be rejected and not know why.................... anyone out there know how true this is?

I know that in Algeria my in-laws were all very surprised that I was allowed to wear a headscarf for my passport photo (my passport was passed around a variety of friends and neighbours for inspection!) although maybe the law is different now?

Mimi X

quote:

Originally posted by KateL57:
There are a lot of "questionable" things that go on in efl, and while it is certainly fair to say that people's motives are not always evil in asking for a picture, I think it's equally fair to say that for some efl employers, looks may play a larger role than one might expect.

This is very true. The motives in requesting a picture aren't always "bad." But the practice opens up the proverbial can of worms, and can create the perception of impropriety. For those of us who aren't used to the practice, it can be very unsettling. And when things go wrong (i.e., you aren't hired), it's easy to blame it on something that might have come through on the picture (skin color, weight, whatever) and feel cheated.

My experience in Japan was that many schools do care about how you look, and I'm not just talking about being clean-cut (though that's big too). I had one telephone interview where the head of school asked me straight-up: "Are you cute?"

After recovering from the shock, I answered yes. Then she asked me what actor I looked like. She told me it was very important to her students. (Of course I got the job. Not to be too immodest, ahem, but I'm kind of a mix between Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Jude Law, etc., etc.)

jv makes a good point - and those of us who aren't beautiful or young have to struggle with it.

But . . . I have to say that I don't really want to work for someone that bases their business on "cute" rather than skilled teachers. So I have to thank them for screening me out - and really it is a HUGE loss for them.

Oh well . . .