A Day in the Life

Riktam De Voil

Online teacher-recruitment agency owner/school owner

October 2005

Q. First of all, can you give us a brief description of your main area of employment and how you got into this field?
I arrived in Japan in 1997 and set up my own school after 18 months. The school now employs nearly 20 staff, all of whom are specialists and like myself are mostly also self-employed or work on a part-time basis. About 2 years ago, however, I realised that the only way to really have a longterm impact, was to expand my own school model of sending out private tutors into an employment service.

Why? A service which benefits not only the teachers and myself but also assists employers whose interest resemble my own to find part time staff in the cities and full time staff in the rural areas. Of course, there are many more established services than our own. However, I think none of them have yet to address so well the primary issues of teacher- recruitment.

What are those issues? I believe they are how to quickly and simply vet, short profile and recruit only the most experienced local teachers for each job or private lesson request.

What are your personal and business values? Influences?
Well, both in Japan and overseas, I have seldom worked full-time for an employer. I admire the concept of self-employment, but being self-employed or working part-time also has its drawbacks. I decided to start this service to help make a difference for teachers, to expand on their perceived opportunities working in Japan. I don’t think it is seen yet, but as more and more foreigners commit to living in Japan, the EFL industry will greatly change. Increasingly teachers now work part-time or privately.

Q. What would you say are the main requirements to succeed in this field?
Well, I would like to say that I think a passion for what you do leads to more success. Being passionate may mean for you educating yourself about what is available to you as a teacher in Japan. I hope that my service can better connect members and browsers, to help find and exchange the information we need about not only job news but also events news. I surf the EFL web daily, but I would like to help to connect job-seekers and school-owners or English students with other sites or networks which provide EFL news and international exchange news in Japan. The current example of the strength of ETJ Japan demonstrates to me the influence of a public forum to share information.

If you are a website owner, then I believe that you need to offer some free services or helpful contents to succeed in getting traffic and thus users to your site. Farming links is also crucial and so I am offering a reciprocal links directory plus a public events message board for societies to post their events news free. Besides mailing out job vacancies news, my site also offers a free service for teachers to post a teacher profile online to a database which surfers can browse.

Q. Describe a typical working day.
Ha! I am not very self-disciplined, and one aspect of working from home is that it can be very unproductive at times. I get up very late and avoid turning on the computer or taking calls until after midday. If it is sunny and warm, then I usually take my laptop for a walk outside, as I hate being cooped up indoors. Working from home alone can also be quite isolating, so it is good to get out and refresh yourself and the eyes. I usually work part-time hours unless there is an urgent matter.

I am a late night owl and although I will fall asleep by midnight if socialising downtown, I am often staring at the screen until the very early hours. Modern life is such that I rely enormously on my laptop and mobile phone and my webmaster, but I admit to having a love-hate relationship with technology. Technology, for me, is not a hobby!

Q. Do you see yourself staying in this field or perhaps making a move in the future?
Yes, I do want to move on soon to a completely different occupation in healing. I acted on impulse to start both my businesses, and I see how they can be developed further if I can find the personal and outside investment. However, currently I rely too much on other people for solutions for problem solving and online marketing. This does not sit well with my personal value of being self-reliant. Unfortunately, learning about computing bores me stiff!

If I were to start a new online business, it would have to be an easy to run personal interest niche store ­ not a service which eats up so much of my energy marketing and promoting offline. Making an income is also a challenge for all of us. However, if we compromise or miss our true vocation, it is a tragedy. It is obvious that most teachers in Japan are not teachers by vocation but by habit. My advice is don’t keep postponing moving on if that is what your heart is telling you ­ it is so easy to get stuck in Japan by habit!

Riktam de Voil is from Scotland and has been a school owner and teacher since 1998, a tutor since 1990. He obtained a BA Tesol from Trinity College; he also taught French and worked as a French interpreter. His interests include hiking and travel. His specialisms are family lessons and Monbusho elementary teacher training. He is now training for a new career as a healer.

Web sites
Passport School

The object of this interview series is to capture a typical day in the life of people working in various English teaching-related fields. This includes teachers of students at all levels, school owners, publishers and so on. It is hoped that this will give interesting and useful insight into the various aspects of ELT for those who may be thinking of getting into teaching or making a career move.

If you think others would be interested in your job situation, please .

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