Job Discussion Forums

[SaudiSaudi]

Dear All,

The International Institute of Languages is advertising jobs in Abqaiq and Ahsa. Please be forewarned that you will be housed in sub-standard buildings and will NOT be given your housing allowance. Many of us were promised a housing allowance during the recruitment process but we were obviously lied to. Furthermore, the housing in Ahsa is not a teachers-only building.

Well, they have signed a contract with a third-rate clinic......

Also, the security situation is tense here due to the sectarian conflict and the posts by IS members to attack teachers, which have been carried out. IIL has done nothing at all to address security concerns (even after government warnings) that many teachers have. On the contrary, it has not kept a single promise it has made -- even when promising to install cameras in the building. Even Berlitz has moved its teachers due to a Police Chief's request.

IIL is a dubious company made up in large part by former employees of EduExperts. Stay away from it and keep looking until you find a serious company worth your time and effort.

Good luck in your search!

[sirius black]

I just got an offer. Now obviously very worried. PM sent.

[SaudiSaudi]

Hello!

I have sent you a reply.

Please folks do not sell yourselves short to a company that does not even give you your housing allowance, puts you in substandard living conditions and tries to retain your passport.

Teachers at the Abqaiq and Ahsa projects are leaving weekly and IIL cannot meet the quota it has promised NITI and Aramco.

If you want to come to Saudi Arabia to work then please find a decent company. It is hard enough to work here without the added weight of an irresponsible and deceptive group like IIL.

[sirius black]

Thanks for your info. Did they also try and keep your passport? Thanks for the PM. I saw the pix of the building and the room. Not good. No disrespect intended by what I am about to say but labor intensive foreign workers (DDD jobs--dirty, dangerous, difficult) are housed in squalor or near squalor and if teachers are in the same buildings then one can imagine the quality of the living conditions. Again, not said to disrespect laborers from those countries. In fact, I think its wrong to keep people in such conditions.

Thanks for letting us know.

[SaudiSaudi]

No problem bro. The teachers at both projects don't want other teachers to be fooled and lied to as well. Many teachers are leaving.

There are decent companies in Saudi Arabia. Just keep looking.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the holiday season.....

[plumpy nut]

[sirius black]

Just to understand this clearly. You said "If you have an employment visa you have to have an exit visa from the company to leave"

Do I understand it correctly to mean that our iqama (not sure if the name is right) includes an exit visa? Or is it nromal to have to get permission to leave the country before the contract is finished? I hear of people going to surrounding countries such as Bahrain for the weekend.

[nomad soul]

An employment visa is valid for only 90 days before it expires. Once you enter the country on an employment visa, your Saudi employer has the remainder of those 90 days to submit your paperwork for your residency permit (iqama). It's not a visa. When you wish to travel outside KSA for a weekend or over a break, you inform your employer of the days (exiting requires their approval) and then begin the steps toward leading to your exit/reentry visa. (It's a very easy, quick process.)

By the way, contrary to Plumpy Nut's post (above), employers should not be keeping an employee's passport, regardless of his/her visa type. See "Do employers/sponsors still withhold passports?" (http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=108129).

[plumpy nut]

[Beast]

People were warned back in September about IIL.

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=108455&highlight=iil

Always do a search about an employer first.

It's miserable.... Don't go.

[sirius black]

Saudi Saudi please check your email.

[sirius black]

Saudi Saudi please check your email.

[Mengxun]

My response to this post expresses my thoughts on coming to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as an ESL Instructor for International Institute for Languages Co. (IIL) in the Al-Ahsa National Industrial Training Institute (NITI)/Aramco project utilizing a partnership with Kaplan Colleges, International. IIL is the project’s HR provider and Kaplan provider of the project’s curriculum. My ideas are informed by both what I see on the ground working here through IIL on the this ambitious and forward looking project and a growing sense of historical and social/cultural context as I research what I am encourntering. It is also affected by my background as a business teacher and businessman, freelance business writer and consultant as well as professional pedagogical ESL experience in China, Colombia and Turkey before coming to the KSA. Finally this reflection considers my reactions to current IIL colleagues at Al Hasa NITI and online comments by current and/or former IIL employees elsewhere in the Kingdom.

Starting with the latter, it was a bit surprising to read these comments on this Forum by a former IIL/NITI employee in Dammam which were negative and seem at times hostile. My experience has been completely different. This reflection, therefore has led me to consider what we as IIL sourced Trainers are doing here: First, we are not ESL teachers in the usual sense. Neither are working with students at a secondary school or institution of higher learning or university but rather with trainees who are paid trainee employees of Aramco and Petrorabigh.

So when those trainees come to our training classes they are in fact at work and the eight classes trainees attend each day are the equivalent of eight hours of work. Hence it is crucial that our work on English language fluency and accuracy not only prepares trainees for technical courses in their assigned job but that we are to model the kinds of attitude and behaviour that will enable them to get, develop and hopefully thrive in their career at Aramco and Petrorabigh. For example, all mobile phones are collected at the beginning of each class of my training classes and only allowed if I am given a written note from their Trainee Surpervisor authorizing the trainee to have it in order to receive an important personal phone call. This brings me to issue of IIL colleagues’ attitudes.

It is, of course, important that we as IIL sourced Trainers have a safe, clean and comfortable place to live but unlike this blogger to whom I posting this response as well as some my current colleagues at Ah-Ahsa NITI, happily I do and am very pleased with way IIL has and is providing all of those things. So when other actual current IIL sourced colleagues also complain about such things, I am impelled to question whether they are focused on what we are doing here. Further, it seems there is an expectation on their part that being an IIL sourced NITI Trainer is suppose to replicate earlier experience at a secondary of tertiary institution delivering foundaton or like courses for academic students. Hence comments about IIL/NITI/Aramco/Kaplan project quartet don’t resonate with the reality that we are Trainers, training trainees who are actually at work. This brings me to the research I have done on historical, cultural and social context in the Kingdom that beautifully address this.

There are two superbs sources of information for any potenital IIL sourced – they will also benefit current IIL/NITI/Aramco/Kaplan Trainers – Trainer about the history of oil in Saudi Arabia and the provenance of NITI: A Youtube PBS Frontline video –
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1GTPM_enUS598US598&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ie=UTF-8&q=niti%2c%20hofuf%2c%20eastern%20province%2c%20ksa

and

a Petrorabigh press release –
http://www.petrorabigh.com/en/Press_Releases/press13.aspx

NITI proper exists to actualize – hence our participation as IIL/NITI/Aramco/Kaplan Trainers also – the Saudization of the oil and related industries in the KSA. Therefore the blogger to whom I am posting this response seems to be unaware of the serious commitment that the project sponsors and providers he seems to denigrate have to this project. The Al-Ahsa NITI training site though still under construction is far enough along to provide an excellent facility in which to hold training classes. When it is completed it will be amazing. So having personally helped several schools and educational organizations in China and Turkey at inception to lay foundations it is exciting and rewarding to borrow from the title of former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal’s memoir to again have a “share in the task.”

[johnslat]

Dear Mengxun,

That's two press releases, isn't it?

For some reason, I tend to regard press releases as something less than a "superb source." But hey. that's just a personal prejudice.

[water rat]