One of the main reasons I chose ITTO Guadalajara for my teacher training is that they offer life-long job placement assistance. Because the school has connections all over the world and a reputation for turning out well-qualified graduates, they are able to secure teaching positions for people with no prior teaching experience, like yours truly. Of course, recent grads like me have to start at the bottom, which generally means low pay and crappy hours (split shifts and weekends), but that’s life.

I’ve discovered that there are some interesting twists to looking for a job in Mexico:

• For teaching jobs (and perhaps for all jobs, but I can’t speak to that), there is a required CV format that includes a b/w photo. Obviously, this opens the door to discrimination based on race or other factors — which, according to my instructor at ITTO, is exactly the point. He claims that most Mexican schools have an image of what an English teacher should look like, and the person they have in mind is white. I can’t confirm the accuracy of this claim, but, if schools do tend to discriminate against non-white applicants, having to include a photo on a resume makes it easy for them to do so.

B/w photo required

• Gender and age discrimination is the way of the world here. (Like racial discrimination, age discrimination is made easy by the requirement to include date of birth on one’s CV.)  I saw an ad for female English teachers age 24-34. (WTF? Are you expected to teach in a bikini or something?) I’ve seen other ads for teachers under 40 only. The hotel around the corner is hiring female maids, age 20-40 only. Not very long ago, this sort of thing was legal in the US too, and while it still exists “back home,” at least there are legal protections in place in the States. Not so here.
• For the teaching position I am considering, I have to take a drug test. I assume it’s because the school contracts with large US-based corporations such as HP to teach business English; and because these corporations have US government contracts, they have to certify that not only are their own employees drug-free, but their contractors’ employees are too. (That’s how it worked when I was at UnitedHealth Group; printers, ad agencies, and other marketing-related vendors all needed to be certified.) What’s interesting to me is that, while conservatives in the US complain endlessly about how the “liberal agenda” (e.g., environmental protection, workers’ rights) creates an unfavorable business environment by adding costs that affect companies’ profitability, you never hear them bitch about drug testing legislation. However, ever since Reagan and “Zero Tolerance,” US companies and their contractors — including small vendors like my potential employer in Guadalajara or my print vendor at UHG — have been putting millions of dollars each year into the pockets of Big Pharma companies that provide drug tests. I absolutely agree that there are industries and jobs where drug testing is essential. But English schools? Printers and design firms? You can read more about the drug testing industry here.