Job Discussion Forums

[tiberio]

I am preparing myself for an interview I have with HCT this Tuesday and I was a bit surprised to read this on their website: http://recruit.hct.ac.ae/working_at_the_hct.asp:

Faculty usually teach 20 periods per week and are expected to be in the college for at least 8 hours per day.

What worries me is the words "in the college". I am used to preparing myself at home and I prefer it this way, but this sounds like time in the office kind of way. Is this reality at HCT? Please advise.

Kind regards,
Tiberio

[veiledsentiments]

I am the same as you and it was one of my biggest gripes with HCT. Yes, it is enforced and you must be in the building, preferably at your desk if not in class for the college hours. There is a bit of variance by college - but assume 35-40 as your minimum/maximum... and NO, it is not negotiable. Mine was 7:30 to 2:30.

I found it impossible to do ANYTHING in their office systems which tend to be open plan with constant traffic and ringing phones and people talking and students wandering in and out at will. I would go home at 2:30, eat lunch, quick nap, and then do my preps and corrections.

I always envied those that could work with chaos all around them... I put up with it for one contract and accepted it as part of my exchange for the nice padding of my savings account.

VS

[Tuttifruitti]

I agree with VS - yes, you are expected to be there for the duration, though depending on the college and your supervisor the strict enforcement of this can vary. The problem is that there are many who spend that and much more time at work, making it more difficult to plead the case for working from home!

In addition, your timetable may make it difficult to leave. In some colleges you might have 2 or 3 hours between classes and it may not be possible to get home and back in this amount of time. There are definitely timetables which are more conducive to getting it all done and being able to go home within an 8 hour time period, though you will not have any input into your timetable either. There is, however, the possibility that you will have classes which are 6 or 8 hours apart, and then you would be able to leave and return for later classes.

Really, like many things in the HCT, this will depend on a lot of factors over which you will have no control, but a 40 hour week in college is part of the contract.

My advice: do the interview, say nothing about the hours and if you get the job, check around your college when the new semester starts and you'll soon see what's what

Good luck

[tiberio]

thanks a lot to you, VS and Tuttifrutti, this helps me understand the environment better at a stage, where my likely move to the UAE is on my mind constantly.

i had a good interview (also thanks to a lot of help from this website and the people like you two, who post here), and now what i need is patience...

[veiledsentiments]

Well, that is one of the most important things one must have for work in the ME.

Good Luck!!

VS

[Tuttifruitti]

Again, I agree - patience is a necessity in the ME!

If you get an offer and you plan on coming to the UAE, the HCT is generally very good to to all your paperwork, visas etc, so at least that's one less thing to worry about, so best of luck!

[Afra]

If you end up with a good supervisor, you'll be O.K. However, even the most liberal of colleges requires a timetable of your hours posted at your workplace and sent to your supervisor. As this includes your lunch hour, you'll be on campus 9 hours a day. In theory.

[django]

Split shifts are the reality for many HCT staff members. Also, be aware that while you may be able to make some arrangement with an accommodating supervisor s/he doesn't have the final say over your working hours. The director at one of the colleges last academic year stated that 8 to 5 was the minimum working day.

[Strolling minstrel]

Coming from an exclusively EFL background it took me some time to adapt to the insitutional working hours. This is how I explained it to myself. First, you're a member of an outfit that breeds committees and teams. It is also a very meeting-rich environment. You are therefore expected to be available to take part, which is fair enough. Second, students need a lot of support, and they neeed to be able to get hold of you. Third, given the excellent resource banks which have been developed in most colleges, it makes sense to be on campus to exploit them. And I discovered a fourth reason. I could now draw a line between work and family! That's right, I could stop taking work home and focus on what mattered most to me with a clear conscience!!

[tiberio]

I had my first meeting with my supervisor at my new job with HCT and he confirmed 20 contact hours plus another 20 hours sitting in the office, which came not too unexpected after your postings here but then again did not make me too happy.

Obviously now that I am here, I have little choice but to comply anyways, but it is certainly not how my dream of Arabia looked like.

In another thread there was talk of no poaching, that basically all government institutions apply the no poaching rule, meaning there is no point even registering a CV with any other university when working for HCT. Does someone know more about this? Does this mean I can only apply for jobs outside the UAE or are there universities that do recruit from within UAE?

Kind regards from 20hoursaweeksittingaroundinanofficeTiberio

[Jamieson]

Twenty hours sitting around the office?! I've been at HCT for several years, and can safely say that only suckers and brown-nosers sit at their desks for the required 20 hours. Most of us are done teaching by early afternoon and slip off home, where it's quiet, to do our preparation and marking - or go to the gym and the pool.

This system seems to work (but don't tell the management that - they only like to hear that it doesn't work!), as my particular college has usually achieved record numbers of student passes and record numbers of high IELTS grades (within the HCT system).

The management are particularly clueless about efficient management and motivation of teachers. There is absolutely no need for a clocking in/out system, although some colleges in HCT operate it. Their results, however, would seem to indicate that their way of handling their most valuable human resources leads to conterproductive results.

In short, if you treat your professionals like professionals, they will respond in the appropriate manner. If you believe that they're factory fodder, you'll get labourers - and disillusioned ones at that!

[caliph]

Jamieson,

+1

[Manny2]

Tiberio all this talk of poaching and applying for other jobs are you thinking of quitting the HCT already ?? I am not sure which college you are in but it does depend on where you are , your Supervisor, your Director, on how easy it is to duck out early...but I believe there are always enough die hards with nothing better to do to keep the place looking busy without you. Remember if you ask your supervisor a question on office hours you will just get the party line, and that goes for some colleagues too.

...and yes while working for the HCT you can not apply to ZU, UAEU, the PI - though not a governemnt institution it has a no poaching understanding - as far as Abu Dhabi University , Al Hosun and the Sorbonne go I am not sure you would want to work with them anyway.

Best of luck in the new job , once the students start you will have plenty of razzmatazz and meetings to keep you busy.

[veiledsentiments]

Tiberio,

The key with HCT is to play the game... and then watch to see what everyone does. Be lowkey and don't draw attention to yourself...

The funny thing is way back in the 90's, their "new buzz" was TQM and they held these silly seminars about the 'employees' having 'input' into the system.

Afterwards we were given an anonymous evaluation form where I put down my opinion that it was a complete waste of time as management was never going to allow us to have any input into their 'nanny management system.' And I got called in for a reprimand for my bad attitude. Which I naturally made worse by laughing at them and suggesting that they spent way too much time analyzing handwriting, and they should have mentioned on the form that they didn't want our honest opinions, but that we should only reflect back to them what they wanted to hear. And the colleges were so much smaller then that it was impossible to sneak out early... though there was a great coffee shop around the corner out back... where the supervisors knew to come and look for us... if they weren't already there. The place did a booming business from us.

So, Manny2... finish out that contract... save your money... and gather what experience you can. I must admit that I learned a lot in my two contracts there because I am sure that it is still true today that they have some exceptional people teaching there. Naturally you are bored to tears right now, but once classes start, you will find that there is plenty to do for most of the time you are there, and you do have access to a computer and the internet, don't you?

Finishing that 3 year contract will look good on the CV and then you can move on - breaking it will make you look bad, not them.

VS

[helenl]

for most of the HCT campuses - observe and then pattern your own behaviour accordingly. Most English teachers spend the full 8/9 hours a day at college simply because of the unending meetings the English department seems to have. (I knew of one teacher who was scheduled for 3 different meetings in one day at the same time - madness).

Be aware too, that at some campuses you may be observed by supervisors/management more closely than others, even by certain colleagues who may be playing some kind of political game (which happens most often at the larger campuses) of their own.

However, I don't want to make you paranoid and constantly looking over your shoulder , most colleges employ a "don't ask don't tell" policy" unless some idiot tries to make a point of "clarifying the policy" at which point management has no choice but to espouse the party line.