Job Discussion Forums

[jamo22]

Im posting this twice cause I believe the other thread contained largely irrelevant posts, not conducive to a discussion on Heart and the safety of Ibaraki prefecture.

Has anyone signed with these recruiters before? Are they good to work for?

They place alt teachers in the Ibaraki region. http://www.heart-school.jp/en/index.html

Anyway, they seem pretty above board to me.

Another query, how is this region after the tsunami and Fukushima incident? Would you consider it relatively safe to live there keeping in mind it's proximity to Fukushima?

Thanks

[ssjup81]

Personally, I don't find all the discussion irrelevant, as some of the info (insurance for instance) is good to know about and how Heart deals with it. You could've just posted back into the thread as opposed to making a new one.

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=82118&highlight=heart
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=77085&highlight=heart

I can't speak for the Ibaraki area, as I was in Yamagata (and prefer northern areas because of the climate), but maybe you should ask something more specific so that you can get an answer. I gave a small description of how I had a good experience working with the company.

You can also see other people's opinions on Heart in those two threads.

Thinking about it, the only thing I did dislike was the CoE stuff.

[gittelbug]

I worked for Heart for 6 months (special trial contract with the area thus the short time). I was not happy with them at all. While the recruiters have good English (or are native speakers) those who we worked with (and answered to) had very poor English which made speaking to them very difficult as well as reading emails sent by them. My training consisted of "see this picture and make a lesson out of it". Personally I found this less than helpful as it was my first exposure (outside of my 20 hour TFEL course) to making a lesson plan. Also when I went to these recruiters/advisers for help or questions involving my lesson (due to contract i was not allowed to talk to the English teacher(s) I worked with about this) I was given mean remarks about about it. That being said I've spoken to people who worked for Heart and loved it and love their schools.

Thus my advise would be: If you have teaching experience then you might be alright as you'll probably have very little interaction with them. If you've lived in Japan before or speak basic Japanese (enough to communicate) then you'd be alright as they won't help you out in daily life. They dropped us off and said "see ya" which was the last we heard from them until training. In the end I'd say stay away. They seem nice and professional when recruiting you to come work but once you get the job anything goes, just don't expect much help from them. There are a lot of other jobs out there though so I'm sure you can find something else.

Good luck,

[rxk22]

[gittelbug]

[extradross]

Don't really want to participate at any length in the resurrection of last year's 'Heart' thread-just like to say to any potential employees to be very very wary of their foreign recruiters-particularly regarding interviews and providing you with 'helpful' information. I can fondly remember the 2008 telephone interview I had with one of their foreign recruiters from Australia.......the questions asked of me about my educational background/ teaching methods were pitiful, the information he gave was bullshit-particularly with regards the health insurance/pension scheme and the guy quickly moved the conversation/interview away from educational matters in Japan onto the Blok M area in Jakarta where I live.....he was curious about the availability of young females in the areas notorious bars. Just remembered that this interview was at my own expense....typical Heart! Beware of these creeps.

[OneJoelFifty]

Hello,

I'm currently in my second year working for Heart. I stayed the second year because I really love my school, and was prepared to put up with what I see as standard practice for a dispatch company. Namely no health insurance, hours of pay docked for things like leaving school early, etc.

I can echo some of what has already been said. I'm working in Mito, the capital of Ibaraki, and have been very happy with the support I've received when needed (although in truth I've not need too much). However, I have heard a complaint or two from the people that are based outside Mito and have different coordinators.

The training is also rubbish, frankly. You'll get a little talk that basically amounts to "this is how to be polite to the staff at school" and depending on your school you might be expected to start planning and leading lessons right away. In my case I had to learn on the job. If you have no experience, it's unlikely that the school (or the Board of Education, for that matter) will be aware of that. So expectations and reality may differ somewhat.

That said, I've enjoyed my time here immensely, and would happily sign up for another year next April. A plus of Heart is that they also double as a language school, and you may be able to teach classes to suppliment your pay.

Ibaraki is now fine following the eathquake. At the time I went without electricity and water for a day or two, but others outside Mito had to wait as long as a few weeks before everything was back to normal. A word of warning, too - Ibaraki is countryside. Tokyo is a couple of hours away but don't expect a lot from most of the prefecture. On the whole it seems quite an unremarkable place.

[rxk22]

[/quote]

Basically, you're paid (or at least how it was for me) by the contracted hours a month. So say I came down with the flu and was out of school for 2 days, you don't get paid for those days you missed. Or in the very likely case you need to get to the immigration office to deal with your visa and either have to take a whole or half day off (never mind they could send someone in your place) you don't get paid for that either. Also national holidays when the school was closed were unpaid. I got paid (half i think) for my xmas/new years holiday which was about a moth. I think the pay depends on the location contract. I was in Chiba and as i said sort of varied month to month.

Also you're very right about the transport. It's "included" in your pay. Which means they don't want to pay you anymore than they already are. The place they originally set me up in (i moved out due to it being a dump... mold, urine stains,etc) was actually quite far from my schools and cost me more than what was factored into my pay for transport.

All my coworkers who came over to Japan with me were paid the same amount but we all lived in very different locations. Heart didn't even find out places until the day before we moved in. They didn't pay my health insurance which i didn't even know wasn't right until I just saw it mentioned in another post.

Even in the end we all had to mail heart back our text books (at our own expense of course)

Basically it was pretty shady. Which is a shame because the recruitment people were so nice. There was one good adviser I had who was Swedish and thus was fluent in English. He helped me out a lot as he saw me struggling and the language issue kept me and the Japanese advisers i had from really understanding one another.

I honestly don't remember too much detail about my contract. I have a copy sitting around somewhere I'm sure if you really wanna know the exact figures.[/quote]




I actually applied for the Kashiwa position in Chiba. They seemed really interested in me, then never got back to me. Then gave me an offer with like 3 days before the semester started. Pretty shady.

How did you get by on so little?

[yamanote senbei]

[gittelbug]