Before I left the USA I had heard about "leapfrog" jobs or "leapfrog companies" in which the company was well aware of the fact that their employees are going to come and work there for a year, year and a half, maybe two years, and then move on to other companies that were larger and could offer much better wages.
These companies were normally smaller firms and were very aware of the fact that they couldn't possibly compete with the larger multi-national corporations and their position in the market, after some reflection, may have been intentional. They went after recent college graduates because they knew they could get them at a fraction of the price of their experienced counterparts and didn't really even try to retain them.
I've come to the realization over the years and by knowing a lot of people involved in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) industry that Thailand might be exactly the same sort of thing but just a different industry.
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I have in the past encouraged people to NOT get involved in the ESL game in Thailand because I feel as though it is a dead end but recently I have been meeting people that were able to use the experience that they gained from working as teachers in Thailand to move on to much more lucrative markets in other Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, and to a lessor degree, Vietnam.
When you have a few years of experience under your belt from ESL teaching in Thailand you become a lot more attractive to potential employers in these markets for a number of reasons
- They know that you can stick with a job and not do a "runner"
- They know you have already seen far worse conditions than their school or language center can offer you
The bottom line of the ESL industry in a general sense is one of the fact that without a proper degree in Education that would qualify you for working as a teacher in your home country, the BEST jobs are going to be always beyond your reach. However, there are some good money-making opportunities that can become available to you if you endure a couple of years of teaching in Thailand, which to many people is kind of regarded as one of the worst places to teach ESL face-to-face of any country in the world.
So therefore, if you do get over here and find they you have a knack for the profession but are turned off by the lack of salary and upward mobility (there is almost none) you might want to have a look at far more lucrative positions in Korea and Japan. These markets can offer much better wages because of obvious things such as them being significantly more advanced and well-off countries in an economic sense.
There are caveats though: Korea and Japan are much more expensive to live in Than Thailand is so you will likely need to be a bit more frugal than you are in Thailand where almost everything costs next to nothing.
The good news is that most jobs that are worth having in both of these countries will provide housing, transportation, and if you like the job and the employer, even flights to and from the country to basically wherever you want to go in the world during school breaks.
So as much as I encourage people to not get involved in ESL in the long term in an overall sense I want to talk about two friends of mine that got their start in Thailand. They later used this experience to get hired as teachers in South Korea and stayed there for around 4 years. In that time the two of them (they are a couple) managed to save up enough money to buy a flat in Scotland and now they own that flat outright. There is no financing on the part of the bank and now that is going to be an investment that they will have forever...... and that is pretty great right?
So while I do think that imagining Thailand as a permanent teaching positing location for people is a waste of time and perhaps of your own life and career, it is possible to use it as a leapfrog location to move on to other places later. I may actually end up investigating doing precisely that in the not-too-distant future.