The economic environment in the United States continues to be extremely difficult and, while all sectors are realizing pressure from a decrease in the number of available jobs coupled with the increase of those looking for work; some specific sectors are under increased job pressure. Education has long been deemed a career that enjoys abundant job security and the ability to make a difference in others lives. As a result of those conceptions and as a general dislike for the traditional office job continues to grow, the number of teachers looking for positions has recently exploded. Universities have been quick to capitalize on the desire for people to transition into education for the perceived benefits. Virtual colleges, those with a majority of their presence online, have rapidly increased in number and the majority of their graduates continue to revolve around education. As a result, new and hopeful teachers are facing a tough, uphill battle to secure their first job, while the opportunities available for teachers to move to different districts are also under pressure.
Finding
teaching jobs in Illinois, for example, could be used as an investigation into the current job climate as a whole. What few high school teaching or elementary teaching positions are available in Illinois are often met with an overwhelming number of applications, many time into the thousands. With so much competition for so few jobs, potential educators really do need to utilize every possible advantage to find their ideal position. The job search itself is also quite demanding in that individuals searching for, say, high school or
elementary teaching jobs in Illinois, must either attend a tedious job fair and compete with tens of thousands of other hopeful teachers, or they must go to each districts own website and search through their human resources pages to see what jobs might be available. With hundreds of districts in the state of Illinois it is easy to see how such a task can quickly become overwhelming.
A high school teacher at Dundee-Crown High School in Carpentersville, Illinois has set out to help others in their search for their ideal position. Economics teacher Bruce Taylor has developed a fantastic resource for teachers which can be viewed at http://www.findteachingjobs.com, the site allows teachers to quickly search every district in the state for openings that are specific to their own desired positions. So for example, a user would search for art and high school and they would be returned all the current openings within high school art programs. The user would then be connected directly to the districts human resources page and the application. This allows the user to accomplish, in a matter of seconds, what would have taken hours to satisfy says Taylor. According to Taylor, the development of the site was thought up during yet another job fair while he was waiting in line to talk to a school that would, most likely, not even have any openings. There had to be a better, more efficient way to participate in the job huntI was just tired of attending these fairs always to hear the same story, that there are currently no openings but we will accept your resume.
