O.k. So I arrived in Taipei about a month back and thought it would be way easier to secure a job… I have sent out many resumes and had a few interviews but they all seem to be looking for people with experience. I don’t really have any except I have this week long temp job I am doing for an English camp now… I dont know if that will count for anything… But also this agent Jenny Lai is telling me now I wont be able to find work in Taipei because there are many teachers and only people with experience are being hired now. Is this true? What do you all suggest. I appreciate the help…
P.s… I have an interview with h.e.s.s next week and they want a 60-120 min interview/demo… I am starting to think this maybe wasn’t such a good idea after all…
A lot of the people who work for HESS or Shane don’t have any previous experience so they train all the employees from scratch. They are not the best schools for people who have been here a while, but for someone who has no experience they are good starter schools to help you know the ropes.
As for the agent, never trust an agent. She is probably going to tell you because you have no experience you have to take this very low paid job in the middle of nowhere which no one wants.
Taipei’s job market is tough…especially for a newbie. Your options are either accepting a job with a corporate school like Shane or Hess or another place that has high turnover rates & lower pay or moving to a place with more jobs.
When I first moved to Taiwan I was looking for jobs in Kaohsiung & Taipei but ended up accepting a position in Hsinchu since I was eager to come over. I’m getting closer to serving my first year but I’ve gained a lot of experience teaching & am now looking at maybe moving to a bigger place next year now that I’ll be more competitive. If staying in Taipei is a must then I’m not quite sure what to tell you other than keep trying. However, if you’d like to stay in Taiwan & live pretty comfortably for relatively cheap then I might suggest looking for jobs in other (smaller) cities (Hsinchu alone usually has quite a few jobs available).
hey… thank you both for your advice… yea i really don’t get a good vibe with this agent jenny… she seems really useless and is not the most friendly person I feel… //
Brettygood… I am open to moving somewhere else… such as hsinchu… i really know nothing about Taiwan except the few things I have learned about Taipei… where should I look for jobs in hsinchu specifically?
Ditch the agent and just walk around train stations and MRT stops, etc… I’m sure other people can tell you where the bigger concentration of schools are located in Taipei, but the main point is to just go in there and talk to them. Most of them will lie to you and try to jerk you around. Don’t believe too much of what really anyone tells you… especially the agents.
Schools here have told me that my students fall asleep in my class (when I asked them to stand up and find new partners about every 10-20 minutes… sleepwalking?), so they couldn’t give me the raise I was promised. Schools tell me that I wasn’t using the class materials when I clearly was to anyone that’d ever stepped foot in my class…
Schools here seem to think they need to have some sort of perverted control over you by lying to you and fucking with you all the time. How this helps business, I have no clue, but that’s what we’re up against. I’ve had just one boss in the time I’ve been in Taiwan that was even remotely supportive of anything, and who actually gave a shit about what happened in the classroom and if the students learned something or not. Everyone else just bitches at you if anyone has any sort of complaint, reasonable or not.
Their business model is currently this: Get a building. Hire teachers. Tell them to make money. Yell at teachers if ANYTHING goes wrong.
Curriculum? Uh… find some textbook or magazine. That’s it. They might even require you to make one for them that they get to keep and use later on.
The agent’s business model is to help you get a job at this kind of place so in addition to the above abuse, you can give them 20% of your salary for finding the job for you.
You can at least get out of this part by just walking into the schools. A lot of them will give you an interview on the spot, or at least schedule one.
Jenny Lai is famous for offering people jobs in locations outside Taipei. There always seems to be some reason why there aren’t any jobs in Taipei for you at any given moment. When I met with her in mid to late September last year it was that the peak hiring season was already over and all the jobs had just been filled. I got offered Taichung and Taoyuan even though I am an experienced teacher. I nearly took the one in Taoyuan but didn’t go for it since I was able to find something on my own. Jenny Lai was gonna charge me 10,000 NT for the privilege of finding me a job.
If you are a first timer, HESS and Shane or Ko Jen or another big franchise school will be your best option. If you want to live in Taipei, but are willing to commute, you can get jobs in Xindian, Banqiao, Taoyuan City, or even Sanxia. But certainly avoid a school called “Uncle Sam.” They are the worst. Also avoid Dewey, they suck hard. Dewey is a recruiter, BTW.
The suburban areas around Taipei seem to have more kids in general due to lower housing costs, thus making it more affordable to raise children outside Taipei. Also, don’t be afraid to take two part time jobs. If you can find something from say 9am-12pm and then something from 2-5pm, or any other combinations of hours, six hours a day is more than enough to make a good overall wage, even if you’re getting the standard minimum of 600 NT per hour. I work full time now and I’ve calculated how much I make on an hourly basis, and it’s under 400 NT per hour! But I do make nearly 70,000 NT per month and have full time benefits.
Even just one part time job is enough to get you by here in Taiwan, assuming you don’t need to send money home every month for student loans or other things like that.
I’m not a teacher but if you walk past public schools, you’ll notice dozens of cram schools around…I am not sure if this is just in my area or if its like that everywhere… but it would make sense, so kids don’t have to travel much to go to a cram school.
[quote=“sean_samten1”]hey… thank you both for your advice… yea i really don’t get a good vibe with this agent jenny… she seems really useless and is not the most friendly person I feel… //
Brettygood… I am open to moving somewhere else… such as Hsinchu… i really know nothing about Taiwan except the few things I have learned about Taipei… where should I look for jobs in Hsinchu specifically?
Thanks again…[/quote]
Jenny Lai can give mixed results. One of my friends got really screwed over with the school & her after a really strange incident. They were practically trying to shuffle him out the door so another teacher could move into his apartment that he’d just signed a year contract with.
Anyway, Hsinchu should be hiring right now since the new semester starts after Chinese New Year (which is coming up in February). I suggest joining the Facebook group ‘Hsinchu English Teachers’ to look for job postings & checking tealit.com daily to see if you can find anything that pops up. I’ve also heard sometimes just pounding the pavement & walking into schools (in Taipei as well) & seeing if they’re hiring is a good way to procure an interview as well (though I can’t speak from experience in this).
thank you all very much for your help… It has been a little difficult here up until now but I think now with this little experience under my belt I have more confidence and I am quite certain that I will be finding a more permanent job soon. I now understand the frustrations teachers have with teaching here! It is all a bit of a joke isnt it. A lot of it is completely counter intuitive… its like dealing with aliens from another planet. Well, at least there are a lot of helpful and friendly people outside the workplace. One of my friends, who is from Taiwan also has big problems at work with bosses and co-workers so it is a cultural thing and it is not just foreigners… I believe.
I’m hoping to get about 25 hours of work a week, live frugally, and save about $1000USD a month. That was my initial plan so I hope it works out in that ballpark. I don’t have any student loans luckily but would like to have a little savings for the first time in my life. I realize that I would be able to save more money outside Taipei so maybe that is worth a shot. Perhaps my fixation on staying in Taipei is due to my ignorance about what it is like anywhere else in Taiwan…
[quote=“sean_samten1”]
I’m hoping to get about 25 hours of work a week, live frugally, and save about $1000USD a month. That was my initial plan so I hope it works out in that ballpark.[/quote]
Was there last week Tommy, had a great few days in Tainan and Kaosiung, cities have really improved and weather was great. You would have loved it.
They keep expanding the bike lanes, new parks and there is a new exhibition centre being constructed on the harborside.
Kaoshiung is bloody massive though, driving in and out of it makes Taichung feel like a town.
Yes through the years Iv become fond of Kaohsiung ! I think if i ever am able to live in Taiwan again, id like to try Kaohsiung. Although , of course, Taipei will always be “home” to me
ok so can anyone enlighten me as to where this concentration of schools is in Taipei on MRT routes or nearby? I am currently staying near Yongchun MRT station. I dont think there is many here…
As mentioned in an earlier post…look around the elementary schools and junior highs…give yourself about a ten block radius. Buxibans (cram schools) locate near schools the most.
Look at city maps of Taipei and you can find where all the elementary schools are…there are tons of elementary schools here.
