Job Discussion Forums

[casual]

I have an interview with the Osaka branch of Interac in a few weeks.
Can anyone share their experiences?

I am hoping for an interview that isnt too daunting!

[QueenSerenity42]

Just as a heads-up, I've seen a LOT of posts on these boards warning that Interac has a long history of bad working conditions and not paying teachers on time. I'd do more research before you take a job with them.

[fluffyhamster]

I worked for Interac and I would say they are a good, even very good company to work for. The Tokyo HQ is very well-organized and runs like clockwork, and of the jobmails I get from Gaijinpot, often over two-thirds of the vacancies are Interac jobs. If you can get your foot in the door, and satisfy them and their clients, you should be set for work for quite a while!

As for irregular/late pay, the system that Interac operates is to only pay you after you have worked for them for more or less TWO months. It must be a strain for teachers with few savings, but at least your final paycheck is a big 'un! (And I seem to recall that they paid a full month's pay at the end of the second month, even though the first month was only a couple of weeks/pro-rated...memory's getting hazy! Anyway, they don't try to scr@w you, is all I mean). My interviewer told me about this before I accepted the job, so I would imagine that there can't be many teachers who didn't know or weren't clear about it...it's Interac's system, and if this is what some (ex-)Interac teachers are griping about, well, sure it's a strange system but it's not exactly what I'd call not paying on time...

After the first two months, I was always paid on the agreed day. Usually the money wouldn't be in my account at 9am or even by midday, but it was always definitely cleared and in my account by early afternoon, say by 2pm at the latest.

The only slightly irritating things about Interac were:

-the boss didn't countersign the contract in my presence, and although some people were handed theirs in person, mine was posted to me (?!) even though I was also in the building at the time. That didn't impress me.

-the "training": paid, but very lightweight and ultimately unnecessary for experienced teachers (I didn't need my hand to be held to prepare me for an AET-type job!), especially since it was spread out over 2-3 days. One of the trainers was a right laugh, the other haughty and patronizing in the extreme...she did tell us a few interesting things about the history of the (slow) expansion of EFL into the Japanese elementary school system, though (perhaps the most useful thing we learnt).

-no accomodation was provided, even though the school at which I'd be working had supplied an apartment for the previous (JET) participant. If Interac had been a bit more on the ball, the lease would've probably been kept on just that little bit longer...

-when I gave them my notice, they took almost a week to acknowledge receipt of the letter and faxed copy > emails > calls (I felt like they were trying to push back the required notice period by not acknowledging what I'd told them).

I decided not to continue working for them because they couldn't give me an absolute guarantee that they would provide more work (and thus renew my visa) beyond late July, when their contract with the BOE ended. If, for whatever reasons, more work had been unavailable for me, I would therefore only have had a week or two at most in which to find a new sponsor, and that was a risk I just wasn't prepared to take (you can never really know if you are completely satisfying all the parties involved in contracts between dispatch company, schools, and a BOE, there are too many players and variables involved to be sure of where they all stand about you). In retrospect, I wish I had stayed with them, though, because as I said above, they were a good company to work for, and from subsequent job hunting, I've come to realize they actually do have a lot of new contracts coming in (like everybody else, they seem to be expanding into the public school sector more and more).