The English language has gained significant prominence in Cambodia as both a medium of instruction and a major of study at universities. However, teaching English can be difficult due to limited English proficiency among students and inexperienced lecturers. The study adopted a five-point Likert scale questionnaire using five categories: lecturers’ qualifications, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical skills, and personal and interpersonal characteristics. The study surveyed 30 TEFL lecturers and 265 year-4 students from three-selected private universities regarding their perceptions of effective TEFL university lecturers. The study used Stata 14.0 to analyze survey data to achieve the descriptive statistics as research findings. The results revealed higher mean scores for most items and for each domain for both lecturers and students. These findings corroborate previous research and highlight the significance of these attributes as TEFL university lecturer selection criteria in higher education. The findings can help universities cultivate human capital with these qualities and characteristics when they select or train English lecturers. Higher education institutions can adopt these criteria to ensure the development or recruitment of effective TEFL university lecturers, whereas TEFL university instructors must develop or enhance these necessary qualities and attributes for effective teaching and learning at universities.