Job Discussion Forums

[tw]

Over the last two months I have noticed that most job ads posted online are those by recruiters. Ads with titles that only say what kind of schools and where they are located, or those that say more about the city and not a word about the school. There are also those that just simply tell you what the contract packages and what the requirements are. There are also the dead giveaways such as not mentioning the name of the school and only using some English first name as the poster of the ad, and seeing the same e-mail address for different jobs. While I am very certain that some of those jobs don't exist at all, I have a feeling it's more than that. I am not saying that employers don't advertise, but last year the ads were about 40% from employers and 60% from recruiters (by my own rough guesstimate). Now it seems they are more like 80% from recruiters and 20% from the employers. Have employers simply given up? Have they decided that it's too much of a hassle having to hire a recent English graduate just to hire new FT's twice a year and having to teach that person what to do at the PSB and Education Bureau? I started having suspicions when none, that's right, NONE of the colleges and universities in Changchun ever answered my job application. Surely not all of them had no open position or were not insterested in me because of my Chinese and/or not having a degree? I have a feeling they just don't want to be bothered with doing all the paperwork anymore, and are getting the recruiters to handle everything. Are we going to see more and more contracts signed with recruiters than with the actual schools?

What do you think about this?

[7969]

it would suck if this were the case, more recruiters and less schools to deal with. i noticed that when i took a job in korea in 2001. most job ads i saw were from schools. three years later, in 2004 when i searched for another korea job, recruiters had taken over almost exclusively.

the problem as i see it is, recruiters put more pressure on potential teachers to sign contracts quickly..... and are better at doing the bait and switch than the schools are.

[therock]

I would say that the majority of schools that are allowed to hire foreign teachers would have vancancies around now. There is a huge turnover, and the majority of FT's do not sign on for second years.

A lot of schools like using recruiters because then they don't have do anything. How many times do we see on Dave's someone complaining about their inept foreign affairs office. Most schools would prefer just to let a recruiter find them a white monkey.........whoops I mean foreign teacher.

[clark.w.griswald]

I think that there are two things at play here tw.

If schools find teachers themselves then they also need to find replacements if the teacher does not work out for any reason. If they go through a recruiter then most recruiters are responsible for finding replacements at no extra cost during the initial teachers contract term. That is what the schools pay for.

The other consideration I think is the fact that there are more foreign teacher in country now who are willing and able to accept positions locally. So many schools can fill positions without the need to advertise.

[vikuk]

[China.Pete]

"So many schools can fill positions without the need to advertise." - Clark Griswald

Saw some evidence for this, as well. One school where I used to teach was down by 10 teachers due to age issues (some teachers had been there for the better part of a decade). Nary an advertisment. Seems they backfilled several of the positions from other local schools. Found out about all this because I called the schools myself directly. I suspect the recruiters may be doing the same. Therfore, ads may be skewed toward newer schools without much of a reputation (or those that have acquired a really bad one!).

[vikuk]

thanks pete - for putting some meat on the bones - by the way where was the school/uni and what type of school was it - and why do you reckon it was so popular that no advertising was needed to fill positions - after all you say that the new teachers came from other schools. Did these other schools also refill their positions without advertising through a deluge of job-seeking FT's - like a kind of FT merry-go-round. Could we also assume from this evidence that only the worse schools now advertise
How long ago did this take place?

[China.Pete]

"How long ago did this take place?" - Vikuk

Just this semester. The schools in question, both universities and language institutes, are in a large city in the Northeast - but not in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou as you might expect. The advantage of working at my former university may be that it offers better accommodation than other schools do, because the pay is quite similar. The few published ads were only a sample of the jobs available. I don't know how much we can read into that, but I do think it's safe to say that positions paying more than 4,000-5,000 per month don't appear on the job sites all that often.

[Anda]

Um, I would say that Chinese bosses in general are used to having a big line up of Chinese apply for a job that will grab the job if offered. Most of our lot apply for a number of jobs at once and take the best offer. Some even back out after accepting the position. So after a number of headaches they are happy to use a recruiter.

I have been working for over twelve years here in Asia so have no problem understanding Chinglish or whatever is spoken but your new kid out of college has heaps of problems understanding such English and so gives up on the phone interview.

China is a lot more trouble to get a visa than South Korea. Police Station permits from here and there, where as in Korea everything is done by the immigration office. I�ve just renewed and my college has to do things locally plus stuff with places in two other cities, what fun!

[vikuk]

[jwbhomer]

At least a couple of the universities in Guangdong are trying harder to be effective in posting vacancies on their websites, and apparently are getting enough applications that they can pick and choose without going through recruiters or advertising here.

[tw]

Well, one main reason I made this post is that I know my current school needs a LOT of new FT's for the next school year. Yet, I haven't seen any ads from them nor from any recruiters and trust me, I do visit quite a few ESL job sites. Right now the Foreign Languages School needs to have two new FT's as one is leaving and the other one, that being me, has not been offered a new contract. Then there is the International Exchange/Cooperation School which needs about eight or nine new FT's for next school year (they actually had someone pulling a runner a couple weeks ago). That totals to about ten new FT's, not to mention two new Japanese FT's. I have done searches on the 'net a lot and the only ads I've found are those from last year, from a recruiter in Beijing to be specific. Also, I have seen too many ads from colleges and universities in Changchun, other than those who've paid for long-term ads.

[Sonnet]

Generally, the better an institute is, the less actively it needs to recruit. That's as true in EFL as in any other industry.

However, to get back to the initial question; yes, recruiters do seem to be becoming much more common & forceful within EFL in China. The benefits are fairly straightforward; less hassle, time & effort invested by both institution & candidate.The drawbacks are pretty plain too, in my book: EFL jobs, whichever side of the hiring process you're on, always have an inherent risk & 'unknown' factor. Recruiters seem to exacerbate this, unless you yourself do all the research on your school/candidate which you'd have done anyway; in which case, what exactly are you paying the recruiter for?

We don't use them, but I do understand why others do; it can be pretty scary if it looks like you might be under-staffed in the near future, and it's human nature to clutch at the hope of a 'quick fix' which recruiters offer. Be aware of the pitfalls, though, and never let anyone else do your own research for you. You're asking for trouble if you do.

[arioch36]

The foreign officer officer is a higher up person, party member, who rarely does the actual work in the FAO office. The "FAO" we deal with on a day to day basis is
1) usually new to the job, so more then willing to let a recruiter tell him/her what to do, even if it totally wrong

2) is often overworked. In China, if two people in an office were enough ten years ago (when the school only had two laowai), then two workers are enough now, even thogh the school now has 15 laowai

3) or is totally lazy, and is more then willing to let the recriuter do the work, even if in the long=term this means more hassles for the school because of the false promises or things done wrong (like tourist visa with z-visa promised after entry)

4) and though the FAO office will penny pinch to death the laowai to death, they will still pay an outlandish fee to a recruiter, because they don't pay this money, the school does (just like they will arfue about paying the electricity fee for a laowai, all the while the air-conditioner is on full blast, but the window is wide open in the office

[Kurochan]

My school is short on people too, but instead of advertising, asked me (and possibly other FTs too) to help them find teachers. With my school, I think it's an ineptitude thing. I should just tell them to put some info on the school web site, but then it'd probably turn into this big thing like "We don't know who is in charge of the site," "We don't know who should write the ad," blah blah blah blah.