Job Discussion Forums

[vabeckele]

I have just worked out the percentage of places that have not caused me any financial or more than unbearable work stress.

Only 20 percent of the people I have worked with in Vietnam (Hanoi) have paid me what I was due without any prompting from me.

I have worked in more places but I can readily remember working in about 15 places in just under 3 years.

The universities have fared better and it works out that 50 percent of these will do me over (and everybody else to be fair).

All of these have been and are Vietnamese run and owned. Oops, one was Singaporean.

[ExpatLuke]

From what I understand you've been here awhile. Could you share with us how your attitude towards living and teaching in Vietnam progressed over the years? Was there an initial phase where you loved it? Or was it more of a downward spiral the whole time you were here, just going from bad to worse?

It seems many long timers are calling it quits lately. That would suggest things were much better just 5 years ago or so.

[8balldeluxe]

Employers standard for acting toward the teacher is the wild card. They can drop you anytime, set up a time and then arbitrarily change it. Once I had a place where they set up two competing schedules with me on both and they conflicted. Then when I missed one class they blamed me. They also change at the last minute, right up to the same day, sending phone texts , and over-relying on your willingness to respond any time as a way to fill in whenever they happen to decide it should be. I've got many schools with 6, 8, or 10 week class schedules, often they start classes and half the students suddenly stop going. The most recent trend is each school only giving one class, two or three hours, and you have to find four other schools to get one or two classes at. Staff never quits and sits in there all day with nothing to do. When they ask you where you work if you work at other places they get shirty.
One school I worked at for four years started consolidating. They were never very loyal about their teachers anyway and teachers would be called at random to work, standing around in the teacher's room wondering why did they suddenly get called. Once the school started closing branches they brought in managers from the closed branches and sat them in our teacher room prep area, and there they would scrutinize and find mistakes in the prepping. They tried to old trick of revamping the school name, as if it were whole new school ( new ribbon cutting ceremony, new grand opening, all same students , teachers etc) and this created a fake need for a new contract. So despite all staff being the same and long term loyalty , the new managers did performance reviews as if you were totally new, saying things about your performance which was all false, and they were new managers and hadn't seen any of your work for the previous four years. Doing this to knock salary down a couple bucks. In this particular case the new manager was pounding his fist in his hand while he talked, in a threatening manner. Now they have very few students, closed three branches and put all their management staff crammed into one small office. Letting the teachers fend for themselves. This organization has changed its name no less than 3 times. They have spin offs and projects under different names. I have had 3 of their names on my CVs. If I include the stints now it looks like 3- 4 different places. This sort of thing has to make you stop and pause after a while. Nothing is real then.

I have had senseless terminations or work stoppages, so many that I can't put many of the schools I've worked for on my CV. For example, one school sent me to many elementary and high schools where I did fine at several, I worked there nearly two years. I didnt want to work one of them because the time didnt fit and I had a long commute. But the company decided to use it as a reason to pull me from all of them, so now I can't put any of the elementary or high schools on my resume because they think I left their students in the lurch, when in fact it was the manpower type teacher agency that did it, not me. Then there are the several schools that have closed, making it so no one could repay students tuition. This is the worst part, because how can you put a place on your CV that closed, ripped off student's tuition? When they put the pressure on several schools and forced them to close it did so after first allowing them to stay open enough years to collect tuition and run programs, thus blaming the schools as if it were the schools' wrongdoing.

Only good side of this is other employers don't check resumes because they don't believe the word of another employer and no one would do a favor to give a reference if called unless they were given a payment.
There is little to no respect for the teacher or worker here. In some places there are some good staff, or a few good managers, but invariably the reality happens again and again. remember the teacher who was just run over by a truck? I knew him and a few months ago he told me that the international school he had worked at for more than 10 years, devoted his time and gotten some job security was just being let go. They told him " we aren't doing things the way we used to around here". It was some new young guy boss, suddenly just changing things, trying to cut costs. They rearrange and change things far too much here. Often to satisfy students' whims. Lack of loyalty, lack of respect for the individual, and often stress and arbitrary difficulties. The more one stays here, the worse one's cv gets.

[vabeckele]

[mark_in_saigon]

Very interesting discussion, thanks for being so honest too.

I think we have several very interesting topics going on, and wish we had them a bit more organized. I really like the topic on the issue of experienced and serious teachers, and how they have to either find the few serious jobs, or fit into the low level stuff. That was on the work permit thread, which really is a different topic, but somehow it morphed into the later discussion.

I also think the question of the work scene itself degrading is very important, maybe that one should be focused on HN, as it seems that perhaps that deserves its own topic as well. That could also be tied to the idea of how the VN outlook towards the westerner is changing, which may be more pronounced up there. I would just briefly throw in that my main VN source told me how she remembers when the westerners were looked at like "big babies", innocent, gullible, but very nice and generous. Now, she says, the influx of the backpacker type is changing or has changed that viewpoint among her people.

Then we are also discussing the issue of resumes on this one, which really could also be a separate topic. It really should, as the subject is quite large, and also very important for our guys.

Let me just comment on resumes a bit, as vabeckele is discussing this issue, most of this should not be a big surprise, but let me share my thoughts. First, from what I see, the way you lay out your resume can easily hide most of your work history here, and I think no one knows or cares or checks. All I see that they are trying to determine is approximately how long you have been here, what kind of work you have been doing, and then perhaps your last or last notable employer. So for the creative type, it is pretty easy to gloss over (hide) the mistakes you made working at ridiculous places, IF you have some kind of compelling story to tell in your resume that is plausible, or better yet, true. For example, the thing about your own school. One could extend that to infinity, saying that after closing down (for whatever reason), you were SO popular that you then were quite occupied doing private work. Not recommending you actually LIE, but the way these guys lie TO US, you should not feel too bad about doing what you have to do to overcome the problems in your resume that THEY ACTUALLY CAUSED. Ya know?

I have made specific recommendations on resumes and job search in the past, only to see members here disparage these ideas for various reasons. I have seen these techniques work very well though, and have to wonder why people want to offhandedly denigrate ideas that are positive in nature and are actually working for people. I can tell you that if you browse through several dozen actual resumes from folks seeking work here, it becomes pretty clear that only about 15% of these people are serious AND seriously qualified. Even those 15% do not do much to really put any polish into their resumes. So yeah, you guys can all come back now and say whatever you want, "this is VN, we are so talented we do not NEED to add polish", or whatever your argument is, but the fact remains, there are damn few good jobs, and to get in the door to the folks hiring for those jobs, you have to appear to be pretty special. I will not add my specific recommendations again here, I have done that before, and these are not big secrets anyway, just seems folks here think they do not need to go the extra mile on their job search process. I have seen serious reward for serious effort and creativity, but as most folks seem to be of the opinion that good enough is good enough, mine seems to be a minority opinion.

Let me just wrap up with a small story about one of our guys who is serious and quite good. He was in VN, hated it for all the normal reasons we have when working in the average scenario (like 90% of the jobs or whatever that number is). He moved over to Cambodia, liked it just a bit more for non work related reasons, yet his final judgment was: same same but different. Pay being less, he jumped thru numerous hoops to reach the promised land: KSA. Pay is good, but he has only been there a short time and he is considering come back to where? You guessed it folks, Vietnam. He suspects some of his students are female, but he cannot really see for sure. He has zero social life.

I do tend to agree that the whole deal is getting worse, but at the same time, parts of it are actually getting better (not the work though, except for a very few organizations). For those of us with some bucks and who understand how to make it all work, this may actually be the high point. That might even be true in the north, but there, maybe even less likely that the work is a professional experience, and you REALLY have to be on your toes up there.

[A Fancy Gentleman]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[skarper]

The post above seems hopelessly naive to me. Few if any of the places EFL teachers work here or elsewhere in Asia will provide any kind of reference. Many will just ignore all inquiries even from inside the country.

Shoot - if we can't even get our pay in full and on time how can we get a letter detailing the work we have done! What possible leverage could we bring to bear to make them do this??

If you are working for the half dozen or less top of division one places it might be possible to get something on paper - but even the bigger mills will not be much use. Best I can imagine is a single paragraph with start and finish dates.

It doesn't much matter to me - I have no intention of returning 'home' but time spent here is going to be a huge blank in our CVs.

Bottom line - spending a long time in EFL even in the best of circumstances is not a career but a lifestyle choice. I am happy with my choice but people getting into this late in the day had better be informed.

Youngsters who spend a year or two in EFL soon after graduation can then go back and get a real job using their degree etc. But after five or so years it's too late.

That's my opinion for what it is worth.

[A Fancy Gentleman]

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[ExpatLuke]

It seems started going bad when you went back to teaching after your language center didn't work out. I've actually been thinking of opening my own school as a long term goal as well, but from most of the people I know who have tried this, it's ended badly. I guess you really need to understand the whole process of doing business in Vietnam. Danang has new language centers popping up everywhere. Most aren't there anymore a few months down the road.

[vabeckele]

[mark_in_saigon]

I have always thought VN would be THE LAST place I would want to put MY grandma’s fortune. Yeah, some guys have made it big, but I think we are not aware of the ratio of failures to successes, especially for westerners. Maybe the big companies have some kind of divine protection from shakedowns and scams, as they are so important to the nation, but the average western guy trying to get rich here gets the opposite treatment. Seems to me that we get paid so much for teaching, costs are so low, it is foolish to try for more. Just seems like the odds are way against us. On a somewhat related note, properties generate a monthly rent of about .6% of their value in my part of the U.S., over here the percentage is perhaps .2 or .3. So why a guy would buy property here, then not be able to keep it in his name (so over half the time, he eventually loses the whole thing anyway), plus not have true ownership of the land, it kinda boggles the mind. Teaching is relatively safe, everything else is quite shaky. The risk/reward ratio is way out of whack in my opinion. Most of the rich Asians are trying to move wealth to OUR countries for these same reasons. Yeah, they can put up big houses, buy cars and coffee shops, but at some point, they want their money in something that has stability and return on investment. ROI is terrible here, most of the money is being “made” in “other ways”.

[vabeckele]

[Threequalseven]

Jeez, you guys are painting a pretty bleak picture of teaching over there. I've already got my tickets booked and will start the job hunt in VN mid-February (yes, I know it's supposed to be the "worst time"). Anyway, I'm starting to wonder if I won't just be looking online for jobs in Taiwan or elsewhere else once I arrive.

[vabeckele]

[Mushroom Druid]

[quote="vabeckele"]