Job Discussion Forums

[leetrefz]

I've received over 60 job offers from China. Many good ones come while I'm corresponding with other good ones. I contact these new schools to say that they're offer is very good, but I've received a lot, and I should get back to them very soon one way or another. If I do get back to them with interest in accepting their offer I don't hear back. This even though when they first contacted me they sounded super desperate (as I assume they are), sending me a couple messages to make sure I received their offer, showering me with flattery, etc. I've gone through this a few times now. My spelling is good. Am I insulting them by brushing them aside for a while? What am I doing wrong? I try to sould enthusiastic and I apologise for the delay. I put effort into sounding professional. I have accreditation and experience. Can feel angorism developing... guess they're not as desperate as I think?

[Michael T. Richter]

Welcome to China.

There are two conditions that I have repeatedly found active here. They are contradictory, yet they somehow manage to live together. These are:

• Hurry up and wait.
• Wait and hurry up.

For the first one: I'm frequently told that something needs to be done right now and that I must drop everything to do it. For example, I'm told at the last second that my exam marks were due yesterday and that I need to drop whatever I'm doing and get the forms filled out. I'd do it and then....

Well, let me relate one such incident. One of my formal class lists (all in Chinese, of course, so I can't really read it) had two people listed as number 15. One of them seemed to be a completely imaginary person in that he/she had never been in any classes. While I was rushing through writing down all the marks, I didn't notice that there were two number 15s -- something that was further exacerbated by the fact that they had added a student midway through the term so there was no mysteriously empty slot at the end of the class list.

Two WEEKS after I did the emergency fill-out of these forms (two copies of each for some reason they could never adequately explain) I got a phone call asking me to come to the office quickly because they were entering the data on the forms and they had run across some student number problems. (I was in Yingtan at the time, so a quick return to the office was sort of out of the question. ) It wasn't until I hung up the phone that the implications sorted through my skull: the papers that they wanted so desperately that I was to put my life on hold until they were filled out didn't get touched for two weeks thereafter!

That's "hurry up and wait". Now for the other.

We're frequently given notice that something important is coming up soon that we need to attend. Ask for any specifics, of course, and we get the dreaded "maybe". "Maybe it will be on such-and-such a day." "Maybe it will happen sometime next week." That sort of thing. Much more often we get a Chinese version of "I don't know". (The waibans never seem to want to come out and say they don't know, so we've learned to interpret different ways of prevaricating as "I don't know" and "I don't want to tell you" and the like.) We tell them that we need to know in advance (for a variety of reasons, including rescheduling our own plans and the like) and they assure us that we'll be kept informed.

Suddenly, sometimes literally five minutes before the event, we're told "you must go now now nownownownownownownow". And the moron "leaders" get offended if you're unable to attend. For example I was once unable to attend a department dinner because I was in another city entirely. It never dawned on the retards who ran the department that had they told me what day it was only a day before I'd have cancelled my trip. Instead they got their undies in a bunch and refused to speak for me for days.

What does all this rambling have to do with you? You're caught in either a "hurry up and wait" scenario (they wanted your responses quickly, but are now sitting on them) or in a "wait and hurry up" scenario (you'll get flooded with paperwork at the last second two weeks from now).

As I said: welcome to China.

[bobo the clown]

Michael paints a great picture here...I have never looked at things in that manner. The sad truth is the picture he paints is quite true. I would like to offer an alternative explanation to the initial question, though.

The summer months are quite busy for many schools desperately searching for the laowei to take over a class. (This is why you got desperate e-mails promising you the world if you joined the school at that instant) Many summer classes have started and in their desperation they found someone to fill in the class. So the simple answer may simply be they have filled their vacancies and don't need you for the moment.

Another thing to remember, few of these schools actually plan ahead for their future class openings so you may not get a reply until their hour of desperation in late August early September.

Good Luck withyour job search.

BoboTC

[Michael T. Richter]

[Roger]

Chinese are congenitally incapable of thinking ahead and of planning down to the more important details. In almost nine years in China, I have only had ONE SCHOOL CALENDAR, and that was right in my first job. All bosses here prefer to muddle along and decide ad hoc.
This is particularly true of new jobs. First they want a promising enrolment for a new class, then they frantically go about looking for a teacher. You usually have zero time to consider - it is accepting it or rejecting it, in which latter case you may jeopardise your future with the same employer. My school of two years expected me to simply wait until they tell me "tomorrow is the last day before the holidays..." - I quit because I had other things cropping up, and they took offence big time, punishing me by slapping a price tag on things that had disappeared over one year ago, to be replaced at my expense - although no one bothered to find out where these things had disappeared to!

And a last observation:
We are but expendable also-rans in a bureaucratic world that never listens to us but expects us to listen to them. Information trickles down to us, but not up to them from us. Our intellectual feedback is not asked for - and that's why in twenty years of employing Westerners they haven't got their act together.

[enigma]