Job Discussion Forums

[Pop Fly]

Try Elite, Wall Street and possibly Hess.

Be Cool.

[clark.w.griswald]

Borromeo, yours is certainly an unfortunate story and I am sure that you are not the only one in the boat that you are in.

I guess that I should clarify my earlier remarks that suggest that two weeks is a feasible period of time to expect to get work. This is based upon the fact that you meet the schools requirements, both official and unofficial.

The official requirements include a degree, being a native speaker, maybe having teaching qualifications or experience.

The unofficial requirements are the ones that you allude to such as age, sex, race etc.

Unlike China where much of the work is in universities, most of the work in Taiwan is with kids. These schools tend to prefer teachers under 35, caucasian, active, well presented, and with a good personality. Most people applying for these positions would wear smart casual.

A suit is probably a bit overdressed for a kids school, and this along with your age (which I assume is over 35) may lead the school to think that you are a bit 'stiff' for them. Having said that, schools that teach adults would want exactly what you have to offer so maybe you should concentrate on those schools. The problem here being that there is not a lot of work in schools that only teach adult students as there are not many of those schools out there.

If you want to find a job quickly and are under 40 (or at least look under 40) then I would suggest that you dress down a bit and go for the kids schools. After a year you could then trade up to an adults buxiban.

If you are determined to teach adults then see how you go, but you may find that you will find the job search easier over on the mainland.

[Borromeo]

Clark and Popfly, thanks for the advice.

I am actually 32. I mentioned the number of advertisements which require that someone be under 35 as an example of the sort of choosiness which exists here, not because it is an obstacle to me personally.

The market here, as you say, is very heavily dominated by children. However since I left China after two years because I wanted to come here, it would be difficult for me to give up and go back there.

Popfly recommends Wall Street and Elite. I don't think I'm violating decorum by describing my experience with those two schools. I sent Wall Street my resume and they never responded.

Elite invited me to come for an interview and teaching demonstration. The job would have been only four hours a week--two on Saturday afternoon and two on Sunday afternoon. I do not believe in working on Sunday and the fact that I applied for this job shows the degree of desperation which I had been brought to after five weeks of searching. The classes would have been in the listening comprehension portion of the IELTS test. I have never taught IELTS but I have taught TOEFL and I taught listening comprehension at university in China. The demo was very strange: she gave me a sheet of questions based on a listening passage. I started by asking her the first question on the sheet and she said "oh, I don't know, I haven't actually listened to the passage." Obviously in a real class the students would have listened to the passage before going over the questions, so how could I give a demo to someone who had not done so?

Somehow I got through the demo, and at the end she said she thought it was good but a little too slow; in the actual class, she said, I would need to go over four listening passages in ninety minutes and wouldn't be able to be as thorough as I had been. (This doesn't seem to be a very reasonable criticism; in actually teaching a class I would know beforehand how much material there was to cover, and would plan accordingly.) She suggested that I return the next day and the day after that to observe classes, and then, on the fourth day, return to give another demo in front of herself and another manager. I did this; on the two days of observations she introduced me to the teachers whose classes I observed as "one of our new teachers" and, when I gave the second demo they listened to me frigidly for a short time, and then essentially said good-bye and good luck.

Was it reasonable of them to waste four days of my life in this way? A four day examination process for a job that would only have involved four hours a week to begin with? I may add that the classes which I observed for two days were nothing special: decent, workmanlike performances neither better nor worse than my own manner in teaching listening comprehension classes. Besides this, Elite doesn't seem to me to be a place where it would be a lot of fun to work. The atmosphere was sterile and unfriendly and--this may seem like a silly thing to mention but for me these details are revealing--the WC didn't even have any toilet paper in it. (That would be normal in China but I haven't seen it anywhere else here.

One more point, which, while not really relevant to myself, is interesting. Clark says that many schools here prefer caucasian teachers and he certainly isn't the only one to say this. Yet while I have seen one ad which said that the teacher must be caucasian, I have seen quite a few which said things like "ABCs welcome". I also see many which say "No experience necessary", often followed by a string of exclamation points, which always makes my heart sink a bit since my long resume is the strong point on which I was hoping to depend.

[Borromeo]

Robert Near,

I hope you aren't offended by me "hijacking" your thread in this way. I did it, (instead of starting a new thread) because I wanted to quote the two statements about two weeks being enough. Anyway, I think you and I are more or less in the same boat or at least a similar boat so perhaps it's appropriate to discuss these things in one thread.

Since yesterday my situation has changed dramatically. Suddenly I have been offered three jobs. All three involve teaching adults. All three are in schools where I would be very happy to teach--where the staff seems professional and friendly, the school attractive, the textbooks and curricula reasonable, the class sizes small.

School A is in Taipei, in a very nice location. They seem great--very small classes, very interesting textbooks. Main problem: it would be illegal; they cannot give an ARC. She said that if I had an ARC from another school it would be legal for me to teach there, but I know that this isn't true, with all the talk about deportations going on right now. One thing annoyed me: when the interview was almost over, and she only had one more thing to tell me, the phone rang and she kept me waiting for fifteen minutes (not hyperbole, the actual time) before she hung up and returned to me.

School B, also in Taipei, also a very civilized, very attractive school which uses a textbook I'm very familiar with. Problem: they offer relatively few hours, and not in blocks, but broken up.

School C in many ways seems the best; very professional, very organized. They would offer thirty hours a week and it would be in block hours, all late afternoon and evening. There would be no time taken up by meetings or paperwork. The problem is that they are in Taoyuan. I spent four hours walking around Taoyuan to see if I would be happy living there and (I'm sorry, Taoyuan Steve!) it really is not a nice place at all. The school says that the ARC would require me to live in Taoyuan rather than commuting from Taipei (I live in Banqiao, so the commute would just be possible, although not pleasant.) They actually said that the government would refuse to give an ARC if my address is in Banqiao and the school is in Taoyuan. The other problem is that they want me to work six days a week, which means that I wouldn't even be able to excape Taoyuan for a weekend.

So now I have a choice between a job with lots of hours (hence lots of money) but in a town which I find rather dismal, and a life in Taipei which would consist apparently of juggling a number of jobs each giving relatively few hours, and some of them illegal. I tried hard to convince the Taoyuan school to let me work there part time but they would not agree to this.

It is immensely satisfying, anyway, to have been offered these jobs. Six weeks of a fruitless job search were beginning to threaten my sanity, not to mention my self-confidence. The fact that these three schools are the ones which seem dignified and professional and intelligent (as opposed to a lot of extremely unprofessional-seeming places where I was mostly treated like something the cat dragged in) also adds to the satisfying nature of the offers. However the choice before me (and I need to choose one of these options, as I am almost out of money) is not an easy on.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who works in Taoyuan or has spent time there as to whether it has some redeeming qualities (other than the high road to Taipei) which I somehow missed in my day's perambulation around it.

Thanks everyone.

[TaoyuanSteve]

[clark.w.griswald]

[TaoyuanSteve]

I tend to agree. The Taoyuan job, if it is the one I think it is, would likely be ok. Honestly, if I were still in the Taoyuan city area and I were looking for an adult job, they would be high on my list.

I don't know if what they are telling you is true about the address thing. I think they want you to locate to Taoyuan for reliability reasons. Banqiao is a little far. And, if the job is Richmond, the office is not especially close to the train station.

One other fringe benefit to working outside Taipei is foreigners are not so numerous. That has a rather positive effect on your work environment. Employers tend to treat you well because they know you are harder to replace.

[Borromeo]

Clark and Taoyuan Steve,

Thanks a lot for the advice. I would really like to know whether their statement, that the government would not give me an ARC for a school in Taoyuan if my address is in Banqiao, is true, or whether that is simply a ruse to "persuade" me to move to Taoyuan. On that score, I don't think I need much convincing: the commute isn't very much longer than the one I made for five years from Brooklyn to Manhattan, but it is one I would be very happy to avoid if possible. However, it would be impossible for me to move to Taoyuan immediately anyway. For one thing, I've promised my roommates here that I'd give them a month's notice before I left; for another, I don't think I could afford rent and a deposit on a new apartment before I got my first month's salary. If it is true that the government would refuse to grant me an ARC while I have a Banqiao address, I too think it would not be difficult for the school to list a Taoyuan address for me.

There is no question that the job in Taoyuan--Steve, your guess was correct--is the more sensible choice both in being legal and giving more hours and, hence, more money. It also really does seem like a good school. Yet emotionally it is a difficult choice for me to make. I am a city person and, having just spent two years in a provincial town, I came here because, among other things, I liked the city of Taipei. With the other job or combination of jobs, I would be running rather hectically from one place to another, but I would be doing so in the heart of Taipei. Also, the illegal school uses excellent textbooks and has a maximum of four students a class, both of which are very attractive to me.

Anyway, your advice helps a lot. Taoyuan sounds a bit nicer now that you mention good hiking and good shopping. Is there a Jason's? There are two in Taipei that I know about, one in Takashimaya and one in the 101 building and it would be great if there were one in Taoyuan as well. Oh, and, is it my imagination, or is Taoyuan more polluted than Taipei?

I would be very grateful for an answer to one other question. A fly in the ointment, for me, of the Richmond offer is that they want me to work six days a week. If I told them that I would take the job on condition that it be five days a week instead of six, would they be likely to accept that?

[Borromeo]

One more question: what are the opportunities for studying Mandarin in Taoyuan?

[TaoyuanSteve]

I tend to think they'll bite on a five day week. Tell them you'll even consider a non traditional weekend (ie Sunday and Monday off in stead of Sat- Sun). I think they'll definitely go for that as it gives them options. Most likely want to work Monday to Friday. It could also make you a lot of money as you will be able to take all the Saturday classes others aren't taking in order to have the day off. Try approaching them with some flexibility while telling them you worry about feeling fatigued by too many work days. See what they come up with.

I also think the address thing could be worked around, too. They may be telling the truth, now that I think about it. It may be difficult for a school in Taoyuan to sponsor an employee living in Taipei county. Maybe it has something to do with the jurisdictions of their respective foreign affairs police departments. So, there may be an element of truth to what they say. Perhaps ask for an advance to finance an apartment or tell them you will have to wait for a little while. Again, tell them what obstacles you face and see what solutions they offer.

Unfortunately, Taoyuan has no Jason's. You can get most things you want out of the local hypermarts. For the rest, we hinterland folk go on pilgrimages known as Costco runs. The money you save by living in Taoyuan will likely enable you, in fairly short order, to afford a used car to get you to those places that sell western goodies unavailable in Taoyuan. You can carpool with someone until then.

As for pollution, I don't think it's any worse than Taipei. I don't think it's any better either. The cleaner, wider streets in Taipei may give an impression of a cleaner environment than there really is.

[TaoyuanSteve]