Job Discussion Forums

[johnson007]

I searched "Good Recruiters" and "Reputable Recruiters" and came up with nothing as far as a specific, concentrated thread title goes. So please post the name and email of a recruiter that you had a positive experience with.

It would be also be helpful to find out if the recruiter hooked you up with a good school too. So, if you could list the good recruiter AND the good school/job that the recruiter led you to that would be twice as nice.

So, to summarize, I am seeking two categories of simple, specific information:

1) Good recruiter (name/email) who led you to a good job (name of school and location).

2) Good recruiter (name/email) but led you to a bad job (name of school and location).

No need to mention bad/dishonest recruiters as I found plenty of information on those folks.

If you don't feel comfortable revealing the names and locations of good schools/jobs publicly then please PM me! And to be clear, I am a professional teacher who loves teaching, so a "good" job to me is more about an institution that is at least semi-serious about putting teaching and learning above money... (should get some lol's on that last part).

Thank You

[drjtrekker]

I know one foreigner that does this for a living here in China. I worked with him for one year and would say he's an honest guy.
He puts ads here on Dave's...East West Recruit, something like that.
Tyler is his name.

[johnson007]

Thank you! I'm applying directly to schools but I'll give this guy a shot too.

[drjtrekker]

Yeah, definitely apply directly to uni's...senior and middle schools often use a recruiter.

Training schools, try to do research on them...usually the corporate owned are run better than franchises. That's what I hear and have read here on Dave's...don't really have any direct experience with that.

You will always find someone who has had a bad experience with a training school...doesn't mean they are bad places, though. I do know a few laowai (after 6 years in chiner) that like working at the training school.

In my estimation (from my experience) Chinese schools, especially training schools are managed poorly. Short sighted focusing mostly on profit and filled with incompetent and/or poorly trained employees that don't have much 'stock' in their place of employment, rather than trying to a build quality establishment for the long haul, me thinks!

[Bud Powell]

This is your best bet for recruiters:

Visit abroadchina.org and esljobs.com. Put up a short resume on abroadchina.com and subscribe to esljobs.com.

abroadchina.org is a for-pay site for recruiters. That provides one level of screening against amateurs who don't know what they're doing and end getting the unwitting applicant in trouble. Supposedly, one can work directly with the school through the website, but my experience is that in most cases, recruiters do the screening, even though the website implies that you will deal directly with the school. You can also put up a resume that will be seen only by recruiters who subscribe to the site. At that site, you'll see jobs from all over China and you will get a good idea of the going rates in various areas among various types of organizations.

If you subscribe to esljobs.com and subscribe to Chinese jobs, you'll be sent a lot of advertisements. You will see the name of the recruiter. Generally, the most active and (presumably) most experienced recruiters will have the most ads. You'll also notice that some recruiters work together under one organization name. They are usually your best bet when working with this sort of website because they depend upon a good reputation in order to continue serving the same schools repeatedly.

I've never Used Dave's ESL Cafe Job board, but you might want to try that too.

There are other websites like the ones I have described, and you can use the same criteria for choosing a recruiter from those websites.

[Fergie]

I guess it would depend how you define "good" - one that is honest, one that is legally registered with a SAIC license, or one that is well connected. When you are a few thousand miles away in North America or Europe, this is very hard to tell unless you have friends working in China that can give you some recommendations. You can at least find out if they are licensed and honest here: http://scam.com/showthread.php?t=644846

But like most of the veterans here at Dave's have said, you can go directly to the FAO's of the schools or universities you like and introduce yourself with a resume. Most all of them either speak English or have an assistant that does. I only used one recruiter for my first China job and after that experience (China ESL) I got a free copy of China's direct employers from the CFTU and found my other two jobs on my own.

I definitely would not upload your resume online at echinacities.com or Linked for two reasons. You will spammed and called to death for weeks by all Chinese agents offering you the jobs nobody else wants and the second reason is that some of those "agents" might actually be identity thieves as yu see here at http://chinascamwatch.wordpress.com. IMO its much better when you know who is reading your CV than when you have no clue, and run the risk or very unpleasant surprises.

[JellyRoll]

...an oxymoron?
Not necessarily - I lucked out this time around a good one. Actually not a "recruiter" but a close friend of the Uni and overworked FAO.
No. 1 question to ask is "Put me in contact with the school, RIGHT NOW" - he did. He also got me a higher salary and benefits, AND put me in contact with other FT's there. Plus, I had 3 interviews - with Chinese teachers, with FAO, and with Head of the Dept. All checked out as Kosher on their Chinese website too, and with SAFEA.

Still, even though a second-timer, some scammers almost managed to con me - watch out for agencies in Hangzhou. You thought Beijing/Shanghai were bad? wow.

So, some "recruiters" are actually "finders", and not part of the whole scam-deal, i.e. they respond to your profile/resume and pass you straight over to the school/Uni.
There is a form available on the CFTU site which you can send to the recruiter/agency, in order to prove their legitimacy.
I sent out at least a dozen.......did not get a single reply from the scammers.

[water rat]

I have done well simply posting my CV here at Dave's

http://www.eslcafe.com/jobs/wanted/

and letting them come to me. Then it's a matter of sorting out the offers myself. When the day comes for me to move on from my present position, I will again post at Dave's (All Hail! Long may he wave!)

[JellyRoll]

[quote
I definitely would not upload your resume online at echinacities.com or Linked for two reasons. You will spammed and called to death for weeks by all Chinese agents offering you the jobs nobody else wants and the second reason is that some of those "agents" might actually be identity thieves as yu see here at http://chinascamwatch.wordpress.com. IMO its much better when you know who is reading your CV than when you have no clue, and run the risk or very unpleasant surprises.[/quote]

Re: unpleasant surprises - funny story after I returned to Canukistan. I was the victim of credit card fraud - my bank was all over it like a rash - gotta love TD Canada - the main point being that they KNOW I'm a slug....and the CC scammer signed me up with a year at 24-Hr Fitness - LOL. No. 1 - there was no such place in my then place of abode.........No. 2 - as I said, I'm a slug.


On another note - I noticed that is WAY more hazardous to apply for jobs in the Spring Semester - there are fewer jobs and they are more desperate. Never quite figured out why this is - unless FT's pull a runner - which is just wrong, whatever way you cut it - Chinese students need consistency, rather than a new FT every semester.
My previous gig was inherited from an FT who was fired for reasons other than teaching, and rightly so - but still the students effectively lost a whole semester.
Thus said, perhaps one can be more selective when applying for Autumn/Winter semester jobs in China - mainly because of the 'tabula rasa', rather than the "grandfathering" of inherited students?

[w68ill@yahoo]

I suppose I should recommend goldstarteachers.com. Jim Althams set it up a few years ago. He was my DOS once upon a time, seemed a decent honest bloke, don't know if things have changed, but they seem to have a good reputation.

[The Great North]

I will openly admit that there are a handful of honest and ethical China job recruiters, but I have only met two in five years compared to maybe two dozen scumbags. So the odds of finding a good one are not in your favor, although I like the checklist the other guy posted from scam.com. I think that this link http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=644846 at least levels the playing field for us.

[Son of Bud Powell]

I've had good luck with ESLJOBS.com. Cherry Cui is a very reliable recruiter. In fact, every one of the recruiters has been good. A lot of the process is being able to read the contracts carefully, securing photos of your accommodations, asking the right questions, and being able to read people.

A recruiter can do just so much.

[The Great North]