This article may contain affiliate/compensated links. For full information, please see our disclaimer here.
Hi, we’re Jen and Stevo. We’re full-time travelers and online English teachers with VIPKID.
We’ve been living abroad, teaching, and traveling since 2011. We worked as teachers and administrators in language schools and international schools in China and Cambodia for seven years.
Since August 2018 we’ve been working online and traveling full-time. Our main source of income now is teaching online with VIPKID.
In this article, I share about the VIPKID teacher requirements and how to get an online English teaching job with VIPKID.
Our Journey to Becoming Digital Nomads
Working with VIPKID is what allows us to live the digital nomad lifestyle. After seven years of teaching in brick-and-mortar schools in Asia, we were ready for a change.
In August 2018, we flew to Bangkok, Thailand to start our new life adventure. To earn income, we were working on our blog and doing freelancing jobs like writing, editing, social media management, and SEO.
We were beyond excited to have the freedom of the work from anywhere lifestyle. But finding a balance between work and travel was tricky.
The truth is, we weren’t earning enough steady income from freelancing or our blog to make us feel financially secure. We got some great assignments and projects with some awesome clients, but the money coming in just wasn’t consistent.
The lifestyle we had dreamed of for so long didn’t feel like fun when we were stressed about money all the time and eating 40 Baht ($1.30 USD) pad Thai twice a day multiple days a week.
We missed the stability of our teaching paychecks. But we loved the freedom of working for ourselves more! We knew we needed a way to make a more consistent income, but we didn’t want to go back to teaching in brick-and-mortar schools and be locked into living in one place again.
We started teaching English online with VIPKID in May 2019 and that turned everything around for us. We only wish we would have done it sooner! Online teaching provides us with enough income to cover all of our expenses and also save money for the future.
It also gives us flexibility and free time to continue building up other streams of income online that we hope will become our main sources of income in the future.
If you want to learn more about our story teaching in schools and our journey to becoming digital nomads, check out our About Us.
If you want additional help and more resources as you go through the hiring process with VIPKID, become my referral. I would love to help you out!
Download our free Guide to Become a VIPKID Teacher
Now let’s get into it!
What are the VIPKID Teacher Requirements?
VIPKID has four main teacher requirements that they list on their website. I’ll break those down here.
First VIPKID Teacher Requirement: Bachelor’s Degree
The first requirement is that you have a Bachelor’s degree or above. VIPKID is very strict about applicants’ education level, but it doesn’t matter what field of study your bachelor’s degree is in.
VIPKID says “We require this because this is something that the parents of the children in China that we teach care about and trust that we are maintaining.”
Unfortunately, Associate’s degrees and certificates are not accepted.
Second VIPKID Teacher Requirement: Eligible to work in the USA or Canada
The second requirement is that you are eligible to work in the USA or Canada. You need to be able to prove that you are eligible to work in the USA or Canada either through a social security number, a passport, or another form of government ID.
Unfortunately, due to changes in tax law, people from California, Washington, and New York can no longer apply to teach with VIPKID.
So just to make that more clear, it doesn’t matter where in the world you are living right now. You can work for VIPKID from just about anywhere with a stable internet connection as long as you are eligible to work from the USA or Canada.
So far we’ve taught from the US, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Romania!
Third VIPKID Teacher Requirement: Experience working with kids
The third requirement is that you have at least two years of experience working with kids. Maybe you’ve taught for another online teaching company or taught in a school.
If you’ve never taught before, that’s okay! Have you been a coach, a mentor, a tutor, a babysitter, or do you have your own children? These experiences will all fit this teacher requirement.
Fourth VIPKID Teacher Requirement: Tech
The fourth requirement is tech. The basics you need are:
- A device to teach from (more info here)
- A webcam (usually on the device you are teaching from)
- Headphones
- A microphone (usually on your headphones).
- Stable high-speed internet
Ideally, internet speed should be 25mbps upload and download speed or above. You can check your internet speed here.
We have taught with slower internet speeds than this in a pinch when traveling, but of course the faster your internet is, the better! Thailand and Malaysia have had some of the fastest internet speeds for us.
VIPKID has more in-depth information and recommendations for their tech requirements on their website: VIPKID Tech Requirments.
Those are the 4 basic requirements that VIPKID has for teachers.
If you have more questions, feel free to send me an email. If you have questions about starting out with VIPKID, or what the hiring process looks like you can download our Guide to Become a VIPKID Teacher that includes lots of useful information and answers frequently asked questions.
The first step to becoming a VIPKID teacher is to create your profile and fill out some Basic Info, which takes just 5-10 minutes to complete.
I would love it if you would apply to VIPKID as my referral!
You’ll have direct access to me throughout your hiring process and even afterward as you start teaching. I would love to help you out! I know just how life-changing online teaching has been for us, and I would love for you to have the additional income and freedom it provides too.
Apply through my VIPKID referral link or use my referral code: JENNI2263. Send me an email to Jen (at) twocantravel (dot) com as soon as you apply so I can start helping you right away!
If you are on the path to becoming an online teacher or a digital nomad, please be sure to follow along on our Instagram and Facebook page.
Thank you so much for reading. If this article was helpful to you, please leave a comment to let me know, and share it with any groups or people you think might benefit from this information.
Pin this article for later!
[…] you meet the VIPKID requirements then you’re already on your way to getting hired to teach with VIPKID! But should you become […]