There are over 10,000 teachers working in Korea, and there've been tens of thousands working here before then. It should be worth mentioning that people seldom come online to burst out in glee about how wonderful their job is. But because the ones who have had a bad experience, come online and talk about it, it's easy to get the impression that this is a terrible place to work. Adding to this, is the vagueness of information and the amount of assumption that gets conjured up when an adequate amount of information isn't available. Someone who has heard about a school through a friend, who overheard someone talk about the school on a subway, who read about something on a blacklist..etc... gossip is a sad reality of ESL job advice and contributes to poor qualifying of employment possibilities.
Qualifying a school or prospective employer on the other side of the world is a very daunting task. In many cases, you are only left with a phone call interview and email exchanges between schools and recruiters, about the questions and concerns that you have prior to commiting yourself to a year at one place, in a country that you've likely never set foot in.
An example of a typical English
hagwon.
One aspect of qualifying schools that has surfaced over the years, has been blacklists. These are websites that have been set up for teachers to write complaints or cautionary warning against their ex-employers. Given the lack of any other information, prospective teachers tend to eat that stuff up, despite not knowing how biased, embellished, or fabricated the story could be of the teacher raising the warning.
We're not going to sit here and tell you that the ESL industry is all warm and fuzzy, and that only the kooks get themselves into hot water. Genuinely normal folks get screwed now and then over here, just as much as flakey teachers screw over good schools. The problem is that you don't know if you are reading a testimonial from a teacher who has a bona fide disorder of some kind and would even make unrealistic complaints about working at any job in North America, or if this is a real complaint from some innocent lamb that got blind-sided. In our collective experience from being teachers, formerly running recruitment companies, managing teachers at large ESL schools in Korea, we've been in the middle of both sides of disputes, and far more often than what gets made out to believe, the teacher is equally as guilty as the school or recruiter, if not more so. And there have been many times that the teacher's version of the story gets put up on the net, without any counter-argument, and people eat it up. One thing is certain, however, you will never, ever read or hear someone complain about their job or ex-job and say, "..but, in fairness, I may have also aggravated the situation, by doing blah-blah..."
Adding to this confusion of 'what to believe'/'who to believe', there have also been blacklists in the past that were found to be fraudulent and taking money from schools to be placed on their good lists.
Ok. Let's put all that aside. The best way of qualifying an employer boils down to is this:
1. Don't bother with placing a great deal of stock in blacklists. Although any information that you gather on the net, should be taken into some consideration, it should not be used solely to base a decision on, as its far too difficult to distinguish who is a malicious teacher who just never took to Korea well and is lodging his frustrations on his/her ex-school, or if they are being 100% unbiased and forthcoming.
2. Don't qualify a job exclusively by its provisions and contract. Of course, you don't want to sign any contract which is terribly undesirable or has some illegal caveats, but this should be factored in with everything else. There are many nightmare employers out there who offer great benefits and have air-tight contracts. And in many cases, a teacher decides on contract based on salary. Choosing a job that pays 2.1 million won/mnth over a job that pays 2.0 million won/mnth. That's a difference of only $100 US/month, when there are a tremendous amount of other vital intangibles that should be factored in, outside of contract provisions. Seldom will you hear teachers griping 6 months into a contract about benefits and contract matters. When they gripe, it's about stuff related to their schedule, the amount of prep time involved, problems with their accommodation, the lack of English that their director speaks, etc... Tolerating this stuff is not worth the risk of choosing a job based on the 100-200,000 won/month it pays more than the other job you are considering. So what should you do?
3. No matter how you slice it, there will always be some level of risk in making a decision such as picking up and moving to the other side of the world. To vastly remove the stress, worry, and mystery of what you are getting yourself into, you can fly over to Korea without a job and conduct the hunt here. Can't afford it? Find a way. Also, there are a ton of fellow teachers on our site and forums who have nothing but the highest respect for those that come to Korea first, when looking for jobs and will go to lengths to make sure that you're looked after.
If you really must roll the dice on overseas blind hiring, then the best way to go after the right job advice, is to ask the school to provide some contact information of current or past teachers who have worked there. Talk to the teacher who you are replacing.
- Why are they leaving? Is it because their contract is up and they are moving on, or is there something about the school that they didn't like?
- What are the other teachers like to work with?
- What's the social life among teachers? Does everyone hang out with each other?
- How's the english level of the school director?
- Has the school been not only deducting, but actually paying into National Health Insurance and Pension?
- Did you ever see how the school handles a situation when a teacher became very sick or needed hospitalization?
- How does the holiday time work? How flexible is it and how much say did you have in when you could take it?
- What're the accommodations like?
- What is provided in the accommodation? How far away is an E-Mart, Homeplus or anywhere else I can get stuff for my apartment?
- How attentive and responsive is the school on dealing with any problems or needs that you have with your apartment?
- What's the actual weekly teaching schedule like? (ie., what's an example of the shift on Monday, Tuesday, etc...)
- Does the school follow the contract to the letter, or do they give some flexibility, if shown flexibility?
A former or departing teacher will likely be more candid about this stuff, knowing that they are out the door soon.
Beyond that, drop us a line in the forums or ask a question in a wiki discussion page, and we'll get back to you quickly about any help or advice, assuming that we don't already have a good article that specifically deals with your matter.
