Job Discussion Forums

[kinnonyee]

I just wrote a long information pack in my livejournal about Nova, that I thought people here would be interested in. It more or less breaks down general complaints and gives advice to people thinking about Nova.

A little background is that I worked in Nova from Sept 2005 until Aug 2006, and stayed with the Multimedia Centre the entire time. I'm pretty open to answering questions about the company as well. If you want to learn more about my experiences there, my Journal covers most of it starting in Sept 2005.

The LJ post

[bornslippy1981]

When did you work for them McFly?

[kinnonyee]

Ha ha ha... Being Canadian, I thought I had DeLorean...
Thanks.

[bornslippy1981]

You have some good points on your Livejournal. Thanks for sharing.

The MM Center always sounded interesting. The last few months I was at Nova, I was working two days a week at a satellite branch with only 35 students. Most days, only half the lessons were booked, and they were usually "lucky M x M" lessons anyway. Sometimes I'd do level checks over Ginganet during the free lessons. To amuse myself, I'd always make up information for the student report sheets. My favorite was asking, "What is your favorite food?" Whatever they'd tell me, I'd write it in the hobby section as, "eating garlic" or whatever they said. Or if they'd never been abroad, I'd write in a bunch of random countries in Africa or Eastern Europe for places they've traveled to.

Anyway, I worked there the last day the branch was open. My final day with Nova was the following, so about the time I gave my 30 days notice, Nova was giving the students notice that the branch was closing. They were given options of transferring to either branch within .5 km (probably why there were only 35 students), a free Ginganet machine to take lessons from home, or as a last resort, a refund on their points. I used the third option to my advantage, and was able to snag a few students for private lessons since I had them in lessons every time they came, and they didn't want another teacher.

[kinnonyee]

Thanks for the compliments.

I know that largely, people have posted negative thoughts about Nova. I would say about 90% of the people come out of Nova with a negative experience, and the 10% that don't stay on longer than a year... I'm kind of a rare exception in that I researched about the company, understood what I was getting myself into, and then went there with quite a bit of Japanese knowledge beforehand. So while I can't wholehearted recommend Nova to everyone, it is useful for most.

There's other generalities I'd get into, such as how the English Language teaching profession in Japan is rapidly deteorating. Some of the problems at Nova stem from this problem, rather than an actual problem with Nova as a company.