Job Discussion Forums

[ESLreturnee]

Has anyone ever worked for i2 (i2ed) or know someone who has? Just looking for reviews from people who have worked with them, and having no luck with the googling route.

[msinglynx]

i2 in Chengdu is so obnoxious. They spam the crap out of every website with like 10 ads per day for the same few jobs. They claim to want multilingual teachers but when they found out I could also teach Spanish they suddenly decided my (up til that point) perfectly acceptable American English sounded "strange & non native". They also didn't like that I could speak some Mandarin. However they hired several Russian friends of mine and my ex roommate from south africa.

Basically it depends on where you go. They have like 11 campuses all over the city and you may get called to teach the same job from 6 different campuses with different pay and requirements for each campus. There is no consistency at all. If a good one hires you they wont argue about pay at all and will give you tons of classes, if a bad one gets you they will offer you like 50RMB per teaching hours for special classes like team building, art or Spanish. So, tread carefully. Some people like them,some hate them, most just tolerate them.

[drjtrekker]

I can't speak to their "kid's business", but their business dept. is ran by people that have no idea how and what to do. I guess that is not too different than other training schools.

They have a 20 page contract or something, with so many little stipulations and ways to deduct your pay. I really think it's ridiculous.
Perhaps that is why they are always looking to hire people.

They will call you at the last minute, not tell u the job is an hour away, and then tell you the complete opposite teaching plan that the client wants.
I only free-lanced for them (I am very weary of getting locked in a contract with training schools...seems like we laowai always get screwed over), and they still screwed me around with pay.

It's too bad, I really liked some of the employees, and felt they were genuine, at least at first....now I'm not so sure.
The sales manager seems like the typical sales manager, though, if you know what I mean.
And they have some laowai managers as well...I thought they would have helped run the place better, but I guess they are not involved with that aspect of the biz.

And I believed they were better than the average training school as well...not so sure now.

I am sure others have had good experiences with them...just giving u my experience.

[Markness]

The pay can be quite solid, you only work 20ish hours per week and there is lots of OT available. You need to negotiate when you deal with them or else they will give you the lowest offer possible.

From my experiences, they are doing better now and are growing super fast, lots of opportunity as an another poster wrote for foreign managers. If you want in on the gold mine you might as well hop in while you can. The pay is not ridiculously high but you can get raises every 3 months that range from 300-800, and I just got offered a raise as a ST (1000 yuan more per month). Not bad!

The shitty part is dealing with the mentally challenged Chinese staff and the way they can't understand the word "No". "Why you no wan work on 8am?" "I don't want to have one 45 minute class and then not come in until 4pm" "It's okee, you make more monie!" I seriously had a conversation like that with them... it makes the hair fall out at a super accelerated pace. They screw you over with OT so the best way is to sign on for either 15 hour contract and never do non-teaching hours and ONLY do teaching hours, otherwise they will screw you by putting the non-teaching hours as your over-time pay and having it roll over to the next month...

Yeah...

It's worth working at i2 but you need to have your wits with you, otherwise they will take advantage. As I said, they DO have lots of OT available, however.. never, I repeat... NEVER! Work OT for them, it's NOT worth it because they always find a way to screw you over for it. Same goes for demos. (Thank god I'm out of that stage).

Anyways, yeah, as previously written it's worth trying them out but be careful. Only 5 days per week and 2 days off, could be worse!

[drjtrekker]

Good for u on moving on up, Markness.
I do agree that the non teaching hours a big no no.
I haven't done much looking into training center jobs before (6 years at uni), but it seems to be a trend with many jobs that there are lots of extra NON TEACHING hours required.

Is this partly to "advertise" the laowai for prospective customers, or keeping us from moonlighting or.....?

One reason I don't care for that is that it seems to lower the hourly pay to under 100 rmb an hour. Just seems too low, especially if one has to move around from campus to campus as the poster mentioned, or scheduling is not convenient, as it often is with training schools.

But I don't care for these nit picky contracts that these schools offer...seems like it's an opportunity to deduct or cheat the laowai.
I find it better for me to work on a cash basis without all the drama.
Like Markness said, most of the problems seem to stem from dealing with incompetent or dishonest employees.
This school has been no different than other management teams I have dealt with, private or uni.

My two Jiao.

[Verityrob]

I've been working with i2 for just over a month. There are quite a few good points, the staff have been really helpful and they provided great accommodation. But after a month of work I still have not done any teaching. I've only done non teaching activities (demo classes and marketing). Also I've only had four hours of training that was basically just an explanation of how the company works and explaining my contract. The reason for this is that I was sent to a new campus so there's a priority to train the Chinese staff. This gets a bit frustrating as I'm doing marketing not teaching when I signed up to be an English teacher. It's also annoying that I'm always being told I'm doing the demo classes wrong when I've had no training on how to do them.
I don't know if this is a common experience for new recruits to i2 but for me I've only been doing non teaching activities.

[Markness]

Thanks dr. J for your glorious reply, also to the above, from experience I've got about a 90 percent demo success rate by doing a body parts activity (what are these? Point at ears, feet, hands, etc. and then draw the creature on the board). After doing this put points in each section of the body and then use the sticky-ball with them and then let them win. Make sure to speak slowly and clearly with them. This activity works from young learners to about 12 year olds. The older students you can grab a book which asks them which city are they from and how old are they. Gauge from there. Too easy for them then ask about their family and China. Too hard for them then work on sentences like "my name is ... I'm .... Years old... Im from chengdu... How about you?" Etc.

Good luck, once the demos are done then it's relatively smooth sailings. And from personal experience be weary of boys from the age of 5 to 10 as there is an 80 percent chance that you'll get very annoyed spending 45 minute classes with them as they try to treat you like a punching bag.