My university’s career services department just forwarded a general call for applicants to teach in China. It looks like they are a recruiting outfit.
I’m not looking for teaching work any longer, but I may want to contact my university and ask them to be careful about what they forward to recent graduates.
Anyone know about these people? When I was in Taiwan the received wisdom was that you didn’t use a recruiter if you could possibly avoid it. Is there any actual advantage to going through a recruiter for China jobs?
In fairness, there are plenty of trustworthy recruiters around.
From the website, though, it looks like just one guy (the yahoo mail account matches the contact name). Fronting for a local recruiter, presumably. Not a great bet.
Some entertaining stuff in the “About Us” page though. I particularly liked:
Yes, lots of the usual hilarity to rope non-teachers into an experience of a lifetime!!!
They charge 325 Earth Dollars to find a McBuxiban job in Shanghai or up a tree in ‘an authentic Chinese village’? The pay is ‘… $400-$750 a month.’ - according to the flob’s currency converter, that is 2731 to 5120 yuan. That’s just absurd UNLESS you are a total newb with no skills whatsoever. A latte in Starbucks (no, I know that’s not a necessity, but it’s a good marker) costs 60 or 70. Stuff that!
‘Most of the time schools do not provide a curriculum. Many people find this a relief because they can create their own lesson plans.’
How does a new graduate write a curriculum and lesson plans and materials? In all the ‘free time’ promised?
‘In comparison, an average citizen in China only makes $200 dollars a month and works at least fifty hours a week. If you take into consideration the small amount of working hours per week, free accommodations, and the fact that it is so very cheap to live in China the pay is quite nice.’
Blah blah - usual reasoning to get poor new grad non-teachers signing up. So the foreigner gets more cash than the average office worker? The foreigner also pays a third extra for everything, and will also need a plane ticket home, at some point.
They sound nice enough, and I’m sure there are far far worse agencies there, but … no-one falls for that stuff if they’re over 24, do they?
Just trying to protect the kiddies here Now, when I contact the career services department how do I get them to take me seriously? I need some numbers to throw around…anyone know what the average newb salary for china jobs is? It’s gotta be more than 400 bucks.
5000, in the city, although you see a lot of jobs with less. If you have to pay for accommodation out of that, in Shanghai, say, it won’t be pretty. Ramen and tangerines get old quickly!
The thing is, they’re a business. They are’t neccessarily ‘bad’, but they are taking a cut of the amount of cash available for the teacher. For a young 'un who is off on an adventure, and hasn’t really taught or been to another continent to work before, these services provide a useful safety net / landing strip (which is the right idiom, there? ), for organising things that might give them a lot of probs. Although it may well suck to live in ‘free accommodation’, you can see the attraction, and obviously it costs someone time and money to provide that - it isn’t ‘free’.
Not saying they are out to rip people off, but for the adventurous in spirit, tell them that there’s a price to be paid, financially, and in terms of freedom, to having a company organise your entire life.
Hope that’s a bit clearer, and good luck to the young 'uns!
The pay is ‘… $400-$750 a month.’ - according to the flob’s currency converter, that is 2731 to 5120 yuan. That’s just absurd UNLESS you are a total newb with no skills whatsoever. A latte in Starbucks (no, I know that’s not a necessity, but it’s a good marker) costs 60 or 70. Stuff that!
Now, when I contact the career services department how do I get them to take me seriously? I need some numbers to throw around…anyone know what the average newb salary for china jobs is? It’s gotta be more than 400 bucks.