In the same week, TutorABC and GJun contacted me to interview with them. For those who don’t know, TutorABC and GJun are mega-chain online English teaching sites. I already have a job and enough side work to live and study, so I entertain new employers to learn what their offers are, considering moving if the offers are really better for me.
The TutorABC interview was overlong considering the work that they were offering. They wanted me to complete an online application, an in-office series of personality-type questions, a logic/IQ test, and an English language test. I don’t think that I got all of the IQ test questions correct, but I crushed their logical evaluation portion and English grammar/vocabulary sections. That took an hour in total, and then there was the interview.
At the interview, I learned that the company was looking for someone with a JFRV or an APRC to work at NT$350 per hour, in four-hour chunks, five to seven days per week. The job wasn’t for instruction, though, but for level testing. They were looking for someone who, as part of their sales team, would give prospective clients ten or twenty minutes to interact with them and bracket them into one of their twelve levels. That meant seeing a new face for just ten or fifteen minutes, taking a few minutes to decide how good his English is, and likely never seeing him again. The interviewer then said that their employment of foreigners for this job was white-collar work that required them to pay their foreign employees a minimum monthly salary of NT$48,000 and change. But how do you get that out of 350428? Is there an automatic bonus or a fixed salary? Then why would anyone work on Saturday and Sunday if they are optional? It didn’t pass a basic smell test, so I left, and I post here assuming that there’s no job offer in sight, seeing how high they saw me raise my eyebrows when they said that they would pay NT$350 per hour to engage in conversation and testing with three to four one-offs per hour.
There were some foreign workers there, so if they read this forum, they can shed some light on the nature of the positions there.
The GJun HR rep cold-called me at night asking if I wanted to work on some part-time classes. She explained that the classes were online and that I would have to work from their studio teaching classes of six people. They spent their time trying to spin the conversation as if I were the one looking for work from them, and that I should rearrange my schedule to work for them. Getting basic information about the company was like pulling teeth, especially about their pay scale.
Me: “How many students are in a class?”
Her: “We have six students in a class.”
Me: “And how much do you pay per hour to teach?”
Her: “Well, it depends.”
Me: “Then what is the lowest pay that you offer to your teachers?”
Her: “It depends on the teacher.”
Me: “How can that depend? There are numbers, and some numbers are lower than other numbers. What is the lowest number that you offer to your teachers?”
Her: “Oh, you mean the range.”
Me: “Yes.” (No, I meant the minimum value, not the range, but at least I can calculate the minimum value from the range if she gives absolute figures.)
Her: “We offer our workers between NT$550 and NT$650.”
I told them that I’d think about it and hung up. Then I cruised the Internet and this forum to see if anyone had reviewed their contracts. The contract, as suspected, was godawful, so I sent them an e-mail with this link and told them that I wasn’t interested.
