I saw this in a job ad:
Work permits take around 4 months to arrange in order to enable travel into Taiwan. In order to process documents and arrange medicals in the home country, candidates must be in their home country or in Taiwan itself, when applying.
Does this mean that no matter what English teaching job you apply for, you have wait 4 months before you enter the country?
In my experience, you can plan around a four month delay between accepting a job and getting to Taiwan. I’m waiting for my work permit now, and was under the impression that it was going take a few weeks for that document (which will be mailed to me from Taiwan when it is ready).
When I get that I will take it together with the medical et al. and apply for the residence visa. There have been a lot of forms and documents to get together (and sometimes I have had to wait for document X before submitting with form Y in order to get document Z, which will later be given to someone else), and sometimes the entire process gets held up for reasons outside of my control.
Assuming the visa comes through (appointment scheduled and confirmed post-Jan. 1), there is the challenge of obtaining and lining up a COVID test and a plane ticket. If I can get into Taiwan by mid-February (still a big if), that will mean that the entire process (from signing the contract in my home country to boots on the 'wan) will have taken four months.