Some good points... I'll try to respond IMO

> But would you be interested in a job at an institution that had a
> poorly built website?

Probably not. IMO, an organisation's website says a lot about the organisation itself - it's a key means of communication with the intended audience and should be a relection of what the company represents... shoddy website, shoddy company...

Or only in their native language?

Hmmm... possibly. But if a school is recruiting native speakers on a regular basis I would expect their website to have a least one page in English telling me about the school/work conditions etc.

> It may be hard enough, or expensive enough, to build a website in
> their own language, let alone English. To properly build it would
> require a foreigner adept enough in computers and the internet to
> build a good one.

It's neither hard nore expensive to produce a professional looking website these days. You dont need an adept foreigner to build the site - just provide translation of its content

And some of the sites have been in use for years
> and haven't been changed or updated. With ever-changing teachers and
> services, it would get expensive after a while.

There is not really much excuse for not updating your website

> Also, some places just aren't big enough yet to provide each employee
> with a terminal to be able to check email often enough to make
> corporate mail services for everybody reasonable.

True, but I'm not sure it's relevant to the point being made...

> Another problem, which we went through last year, is that a savvy
> manager can go throgh everybody's mail from their terminal in their
> office. Nothing private about it, always keeping an eye on the
> employees business.

Recruiting staff is not an employee's personal business, surely. Should the person responsible for hiring staff be saying things in emails on a company computer that they wouldn't want their employer to read...?

But with a personal email like yahoo, it stays
> personal. The HR or recruiter or solicitor can freely rummage through
> responses without Big Brother looking over their shoulder.

What is personal about recruiting staff?

> But I do agree that it looks a bit sloppy or fly-by-night. I try to
> weed out people by emailing them back and forth several times, and
> see if they can keep up, what kind of delays there are, how well they
> understand questions and answers, if they give any conflicting info
> from their original ads, ask for reference email addresses from other
> teachers, etc. Just like anywhere else, I try to put them through
> their paces first before I give them much info about me. Which can be
> time consuming, but maybe job searches should be!

Sensible advice... but recruiting with a personal email sends such a negative message to me that I wouldn't bother going through the time consuming process...

Just my opinion... thanks for yours