Job Discussion Forums

HunanForeignGuy · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 989 Location: Shanghai, PRC

To the OP,

Let's do a bit of a post-mortem to understand what went wrong.

1. Do you have a full four-year university degree?

2. You carry a British passport or so you have stated.

3. Do you consider yourself ethnically Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish, etc.,? There is no polite way around this one because as Brian Smith wrote, unfortunately race is a determining factor here in China. If it's difficult for Asian-Americans to obtain good jobs here, it is even more difficult for those of color. I hate to ask it but it will help us understand how to guide you.

4. You were never denied a Z visa. It never got that far. As someone pointed out, you were denied a Foreign Expert's Certificate -- OSTENSIBLY -- and thus the process stopped dead-in-the-water.

This point bothers me -- not about you but about them. Any decent university with its fair share of guanxi could have called up and simply preordained you a FEC. The Foreign Experts Bureaus do not make it a practice to take on universities when universities present otherwise viable candidates, viable being defined as white, from one of the scheduled countries, with a four-year university degree and eager to teach in China. I have seen the "two-year" rule waived so many times, right here in GZ, where they tend to be sticklers about it, to know that it can be, ha been, and will be done when the occasion so merits.

Work on an "F" visa in China? What kind of an employer is this at a "reputable" university that would even suggest such a thing? Leon P. raised a case-in-point at his university but who knows..

If you come on an "F" visa, you will have to pay for it, you will have to have it processed, the entire procedure will be incumbent upon your purse and your running-around. The FAO has nothing to do with an "F" visa, nothing at all.

If you do agree to go that route, then you are stuck without recourse in an otherwise already-fraughtful adventure. Under no circumstances should you place yourself in such a position and I do not respect your school very much for even suggesting such a course of action.

Once you have been kind enough to answer my queries, then I will be better placed to give a more solid and helpful opinion and offer what I hope will be meaningful suggestions.

All the best,

HFG

valismp · Joined: 18 Jul 2007 Posts: 7

therock · Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 1266 Location: China

It's quite possible they have found someone more qualified (or cheaper). I find it difficult to believe that the school is having a hard time organising the paperwork. Maybe it's time for you to move on, find another school. If you are not too picky, look at different regions besides Beijing.

There are still a lot of positions available, but the problem is almost every school is on holidays. But don't let that put you off, apply, apply and apply to different schools and you will get a reply.

Hint : As we get closer to September, you will find the schools getting more desperate. This is due to them being totally disorganised and not recruiting the foreign teachers until the last minute.

valismp · Joined: 18 Jul 2007 Posts: 7

therock · Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 1266 Location: China

7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

valismp · Joined: 18 Jul 2007 Posts: 7

Oh, and according to:

http://www.anesl.com/schools/faq.asp

jeffinflorida · Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:15 pm Post subject:

Op maybe your "boss" found a monkey to work for less than you and just gave you that reason as an excuse...

It would not be the first time a chinese boss has lied ya know...

HunanForeignGuy · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 989 Location: Shanghai, PRC

First, to the OP, some answers to your queries.

First, you PMed me the name of the university. I checked the statistics put out by the Chinese Ministry of Education and I would hardly call this an "excellent, outstanding university" and whatever other elogious comments you used...according to the M of E, it usually ranks somewhere between 250 - 300 (depending upon the year) out of the 500 Chinese universities ranked by the Ministry which would definitely not make it a top-tier, excellent university by any stretch of the imagination. It would make it decidedly mid-level, actually bottom mid-level university, and as university, it is rather recent and resulted from a fusion of several struggling institutes that Beijing forcibly combined.

Yes, Angelina's is a reputable site. They appear to be a placement agency for ESL teachers in China BUT that is not the case...they are directly an agency of the Chinese government -- it's a front so to speak -- whose job it is to channel FT's to the more remote locations around the country. They generally have a complete listing of what's open in China because those lists are culled from the lists supplied by the provincial Ministries of Education. Even though they act and look like a business, if you come to deal with them, while they are polite and helpful, you will find them dolefully and painfully and bureaucratically slow in what the service they render. Additionally, they have gone down-hill service wise in the past several years.

As to the information they provide, it is not up to me to question it. If you want to come to China to work on an "F" visa, then no one on this Board is capable of stopping you. Just remember that if the PSB does an inspection of the work records of FT's at your university and it turns out that you are on an "F" visa, then you and the school will have a certain amount of explaining to do and ultimately the fines and the trouble will flow directly to you.

If you are absolutely determined, sina quae non, to work in Beijing, then you are going to have to hussle and hussle a lot at this point. Please don't get angry but you need to do a lot more homework on this issue before you come to this Board. The summer holiday for the universities will start in August and then it is very difficult to transact business but still possible.

As another poster mentioned, a lot of last minute jobs will appear in August, usually at good salaries, but Beijing, as is Shanghai, and now even Guangzhou, are rather saturated with FT's, so the job markets there are tighter than elsewhere. Accordingly, ultimatums to the university will not work.

You may need to use the services of a recruiter and you may wish to let us know which recruiters you are thinking of in order that we can you provide with our feedback.

Finally, bear in mind that you do not have the two-year requirement and this may or may not hurt you in your search for jobs in Beijing.

As I wrote elsewhere, target yourself realistically. The example that I have is a colleague from the Midwest with a very so-so degree and a very middlin background who was determined to teach at one of the top 10 universities in China, as only those schools were worthy of him...well, it never, ever happened and he blindsided himself and I would suggest that you avoid doing same.

In the end, if you really want Beijing, try Aston, English First, Web International and the other big language mills...but a six-month's only contract is going to be a little difficult to get even with them.

WYSIWYG · Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:17 am Post subject:

SnoopBot · Joined: 21 Jun 2007 Posts: 740 Location: USA

My undergrad degree is also EE, so that should not be a problem for you. When I first came to Beijing I had only 1 year TESOL USA university teaching experience all while I was completing my MA Ed. (I did not meet the 2 year rule)

My Beijing university did not even send my Masters degree into the PSB because I was told they did not know I had a master�s degree.
(I found later that they only wanted to try to get out of paying the extra 300-500 RMB a month)

If all of that was true, I did not have the 2 years of teaching in China experience, and was hired and given a Z visa only using my BSEE degree. (The same situation as you)

This was 2003-4, so I am not sure what is going on here. My suggestion is look for another place to teach.

As others have advised, EVERYONE qualified or not qualified wants to be in Beijing for the big Olympic party.

If they only knew how badly the transportation networks will be and the millions in the crowds, they would be better off working outside BEIJING during this time and visit to see their favorite event.

I predict every scam-artist and crook will flock to Beijing to try to sell something or cheat the foreigners during the Olympics. Add these people with the extra millions of migrant workers flocking to Beijing to look for work; well it is not going to be pretty.

It is a total nightmare during Spring Festival, National Day ECT when local Chinese tourist flock into Beijing for celebrations I can only imagine the Olympics will be 100 times worse.

However, people still want to get that 1-year teaching job for a free room during the Olympic period.

Wages are going down fast, if someone was hired for 6000 RMB a month and another walked in the door saying, "I'll accept 3000 a month" guess who will get hired?

I feel that is what is going on right now along with an increase in qualifications required for these jobs.

I am almost 100% positive that they still do not check credentials, so if they can find the 23 year old Harvard PhD for 3000 RMB a month. Compared to the 4-year degree + TEFL cert + Experience 40-year-old person, I think the 23 year old will be hired.

If they would only clean up the number of fake degree holders/fake teachers flocking into Beijing, I am sure the number of job openings would triple.

The situation seems to be getting the highest qualified on paper person for the lowest salary possible is the norm of the day

boubou · Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 61