Job Discussion Forums

[flow]

GABA is a THE dodgiest employer for TEFLERS in Japan, hence you will see their ads all over the web. Avoid at all cost!

[malone76]

I really appreciate everyone's input. I understand what you are saying about GABA and having to work so much because they sponsor a visa. I was reading somewhere about a person who came over on a 90 day tourist visa and then found a job. I like the idea of traveling for a month or so and then finding a job. I have to admit it scares me a bit.
With only having my degree and no teaching experience and being 40 years old, do you think I would be able to find a job in a reasonable amount of time? I would really appreciate everyone's opinion on this!

[currentaffairs]

Your best bet would be to go over to Japan on a work visa with one of the big chain schools. It is very difficult to get a work visa in Japan after being on a tourist visa. No one will sponsor you. After doing your year it is relatively easy to move on to better things and less onerous work... Good luck!

[malone76]

Thanks for the advice! This was my original plan but I just want to explore all options. So why is it easier to get a visa sponsored from a big chain school while still overseas? It would seem they would sponsor me whether I am in the US or Japan when I apply...

[Lamarr]

I worked from them for a bit. You have to open 40 lesson slots a month as a minimum. The main time for adult lessons is 7-9am in the morning, and from 5:30-10pm. If you don't mind teaching kids and do their kids teacher training, you can fill up with kids lessons from about 4pm onwards too.

One thing you have to watch with them, and which I had problems with, particularly if you're in a large branch where you don't get to know the clients as well as in a smaller branch, are negative evaluations from clients. If you get 4 negatives in a 6 month period, you then start a four-stage "disciplinary procedure" where, if you get another negative evaluation within the following three months, you get a "reprimand" or something like that, another negative within 3 months of that and you then get a "warning", the next one is a final warning, and one after that and they won't renew your contract.

They tell you next to nothing about negative evaluations or the potential consequences of it in training, nor did the Instructor Support Leader in my branch emphasize the potential seriousness of it until I reached my fourth negative and started on the disciplinary procedure, let alone give me help and advice on how to avoid them (until my fourth negative, they told me not to worry about it, which was stupid). I'm sure they do this to keep you insecure about your employment, to try and stop people coming over and treating the job as complete joke (which it is in a number of respects), plus they want an excuse to get rid of people in case they're looking to cull the number of instructors, as and when business takes a downturn.

I've written several posts on here about this sort of thing (scan back through my message list to find them if you want): you have to bear in mind that all of these eikaiwa schools exist purely as a money racket, to maximize their revenue by getting as much money as they can off customers, and paying out as little as possible in wages and overheads. They don't care about you, your pay or your conditions, you're essentially a human robot to them, to be chewed up and spat out the other end if necessary, purely to make money for them, as they can always quite easily get someone else to take your place if you've outlived your usefulness to them. If you're just going to come to Japan for a year or two, it's probably OK. Longer-term and you might want to think more about where you're heading with your career. Having said all that, some people earn a ton of money at GABA, but they tend to be people who've worked there for years, since before the economic crash in 2008, when they had a better pay scale that was easier to get pay increases with. These days, generally-speaking it's much much harder to get pay increases in eikaiwa or ALT, and the pay bands have narrowed a lot.

One other thing, I believe Nova have a similar pay-per-lesson system to GABA. I don't know whether you can set your schedule with them too.