Job Discussion Forums

[Jack Walker]

Are any on you fine posters starting to feel the affects of the global economic crisis in good ole Polska?

If you aked me a few short months ago,I would have said bollocks to the crisis.

My day to day life was unaffected and went about normally.

The last 6-8 weeks so however,I have noticed that private students can only afford "one" hour per week instead of two, or every second week for lessons instead of weekly. Many students haven't returned to my school for the second semester because of job loss or tightening their belt.I have heard their horror stories about job loss and financial crisis.

My wife's place of work told her last week that they may have to end her contract in April or May if things don't improve.They simply aren't doing enough business to warrant having in-company English classes twice a week.

One of my students who owns a software company, told me he had to lay off 10 people last week instead of hiring new workers which they thought they would have to do before Christmas.

The economic crisis seems to be growing here these days.

[lundjstuart]

Where do you live in Poland Jack?

As I see it, it hasn't effected me because I have students that are higher up on the food chain than most other teachers are. For that reason, I don't see it effecting me anytime soon!

Good Luck Jack!

[hrvatski]

My school hasn't suffered from it so far, I was wondering if other schools have noticed a drop in students though?

[Jack Walker]

I'm down Katowice way.

That crisis stuff spreads like rot unfortunately.Poland has made out quite well so far, but I see it slowly setting in here now.I don't know what things will look like over the summer and into the autumn.

A big steel factory in my area recently laid off about 50% of its workforce.

A guy I know works for a company that makes car windscreens.They have no market for their goods now and are having to break the screens once they come out of the oven.They say its cheaper to make and destroy them than shutting down the machinery and starting it up again in the future!Crazy stuff!

Eventually,we all get influenced by this in some trickle down way.

[anospi]

I was supposed to return to Wroclaw in early February, to the school I worked at a year ago. My DOS assured me he had work available. Then three weeks before I was due to leave he emailed me and told me two big companies he had contracts with told him they couldn't renew their contracts because of cost cutting. So I've delayed my return by 6 weeks in order to save a little more cash here.

I'm only going to be sticking round for a few months anyway. My girlfriend and I are going to work in the UK over the summer. Can't beat a summer camp that pays reasonably well, and includes rent and food. We may or may not return to Poland in September.

[Toad]

I'm worried to read about this.
I'm hoping to return to teaching after a short time working for an IT company who are finding that their foreign and English speaking clients are suffering form loss of business and in turn are not buying much in the way of IT services. This in turn effects me because why do they need the native speaker to deal with customers they don't have?

As it happens, my circumstances are that I want to return to teaching, with or without this other problem but now i read that teaching is suffering a knock on effect I worry.

I guess, if people are not doing business with English speaking customers, then they don't need the language skills. Likewise, if Polish people are not leaving the country to find a better life, they don't need to learn the language...

I wonder where it will all stop. I worry for the breweries who are keeping all these teachers watered... what will happen to them?

[hrvatski]

[JPM]

Last October I returned from a long summer holiday to talk to the boss of the translation company specialising in legal and financial documents. He's a straight-up guy and - back in June - he'd said he really wanted me to work for him asap. But when we met in October it was a different story. The slowdown in western start-ups, mergers etc etc had already affected Poland and he was struggling just to pay the employees he already had.

At the same time, ringing round my old students most of them were unable to pay for lessons. It was a bit grim. Anyhoo, I'm only now getting enough students to make up for the 20 hours or so a week I'd blocked off for proofreading, naively. I don't think (and neither do the Poles I speak to) that the crisis will hit too hard here, but so far I have had to look in new directions and sell myself pretty hard to make sure I'm well-placed for the rest of the year.

I think Poles will always want to learn English but if you've just been laid off then you simply won't be able to afford lessons.

[dynow]

what i am seeing now is a lot of people working for companies getting their hours cut. instead of a full week, they're working 3 or 4 days a week, and of course taking a huge pay cut as a result.

i teach a lot of bankers and they all say they're busy as hell, but as usual the people on the bottom are taking the brunt of the crisis. most of the people working at at least a managerial level are still looking for English lessons and their companies aren't hesitating to pay for them, but the fresh out of college kids that used to inundate my school.....they are becoming more and more sparse.

in the end, if someone has a really good network of people and companies to gather private work from, you should still be doing ok because for the most part, even charging them a higher than avg. rate per lesson is still less than what it would cost for them to go to an established school and pay for example a 1 to 1 lesson. i can't tell you the number of times i've had my students tell me, "I'm not sure if this class or this program is right for me, but I couldn't find a qualified native speaker to teach me privately," so they end up defaulting to a school to get instruction.

i don't do privates partially out of laziness because it's so much easier to just sit back and let my school do the grunt work gathering up students and secondly because privates are often times unreliable, but for those that put in their time to sell themselves and look for privates (that pay well) I'm sure you can still be rolling in some coin during these less than lucrative times in the schools.

[Toad]

[Jack Walker]

Tell me about it!

A few months ago,I had a student who wanted to meet on a Saturday morning at 9am for a two-hour lesson.

This was a free Saturday for me as the winter break had started.

I agreed and made sure I didn't go out the night before so that my head would be im good shape for the lesson.I take my job seriously and expect my students to do the same.I turned down a few invitations for pub meets with friends.

My student sent me an sms at 9:05am and said he was hungover and couldn't make it!

Needless to say,he's not my student anymore.That was the third or fourth time that he'd cancelled last minute after I changed my plans simply to meet him.

I am leery about accepting any more private students these days, even though I constantly have people calling me.

[Harry from NWE]

[Jack Walker]

[scottie1113]

Good idea Harry. I teach private lessons on a pay per completed lesson basis and so far it's been fine. I always meet with prospective students for free to assess their level, to decide if I want to work with them, and I explain my rules. Cancellations are OK; shit happens, but if they ever don't show up without notifying me, they're no longer my students. It's worked out well. So far there have been no no-shows.

I work for a school and use privates as a way to supplement my income. They all come from referrals since I haven't advertised. I don't have room in my schedule for many more, especially since I won't work on Sunday. I want one free day a week.

[Harry from NWE]