Abstarct: In some contexts such as private language schools of Iran language teachers are recruited mainly on the basis of their speaking fluency and in other EFL contexts they are recruited simply because they are native speakers. To put it another way, EFL teachers in private language schools of Iran are hired on the basis of some different yardsticks which vary from one language school to another. On the face of it, employers in private language schools of Iran stick to a certain set of criteria for language teacher recruitment. Deep down, however, they recruit language teachers according to their subjective judgment. It is assumed that in most cases teachers are recruited according to their speaking skills without taking into consideration: (1) the other three language skills which are as important as speaking skill; (2) language teachers’ pedagogic knowledge and skills. To this end, the present study attempted to investigate the criteria of recruiting EFL teachers in private language institutes of Iran. This study was designed to use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to elicit data for the analysis. In the qualitative dimension of the study, some supervisors who were in charge of employing teachers were selected in line with the sampling procedures of grounded theory from famous English language institutes of Mazandaran. Moreover, in the quantitative dimension of the study, 100 language teachers were selected on the basis of simple random sampling to answer a tailor-made questionnaire in order to find the degree to which language teachers agree to the recruitment criteria. The findings of the qualitative dimension revealed six main categories of resume, interview, proficiency test, TTC, demo and induction for teacher recruitment and it also revealed that all of these six stages of teacher admission process include various criteria and should be emphasized in teacher recruitment. Using Chi-square test of significance for analyzing the quantitative findings, it was found that all the six hypotheses were rejected which shows the importance of the six stages of teacher admission.