Job Discussion Forums

[Angelfish]

ECC - not recruiting now or in the near future.
Geos - Only accepting applicants already in Japan.

Anyone want to add?

edited: Sorry, I only just noticed that appalling unnecessary apostrophe in "eikaiwa's" and have deleted it. My only defense is that I are dumb.

[cvmurrieta]

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Ya know, I applied with ECC back in 2000 and part of their application process asked me about my religion. THAT DID IT FOR ME! What's up wid dat???

NCTBA

[womblingfree]

Geos not recruiting from abroad is very surprising.

Teachers leave and finish their contracts all the time so the idea they can fill all the places with people only in Japan suggests to me that they're in serious difficulty.

Have any GEOS schools closed recently?

[kahilm]

Yep, GEOS schools have been closing in kanto. Can't say for the other regions.

They closed they hiring offices in Vancouver and London.

Maybe they've been closing enough to stay afloat for awhile, but who knows how long.

[womblingfree]

[Angelfish]

[womblingfree]

[Glenski]

[elkarlo]

Makes sense. Many people are going to cut back on going to Eikawas. Which gives them less revenue. And if they are making less, and possibly closing some branches, then cutting foreign hire costs is a good plan. I am sure it is fairly costly to hire contractors or to send staff abroad for recruiting.


My Asian Studies prof in 2007 said hurry up and go. I am going this March. As he said the ride is almost over. Us ESLers in East Asia had it good for a very long time. I think soon it will not be what it once was. In fact I can see Filipinos or Indians doing this jobs on account of they will accept far less of a salary. Thus cutting costs.

[RollingStone]

Seems perhaps a bit premature to suggest the sky is falling on people teaching English in Japan.

I fail to see how Japanese will be willing to pay yen to those who are not fluent in the language.

Basically, when an economy contracts, such as they generally are now, sectors and industries go through a sorting phase that tends to reorder their hierarchies. Dominant players either further solidy their position or are challenged. If you look around the international business pages you likely have/will notice this process being played out in the form of mergers and takeovers. Industries tend to not disappear.

So what this likely means for the ESL industry in Japan is a period of reassessment. LIkely, if and when things start to level out a bit, you may see a somewhat different looking industry. That will depend on who is at the top and what their priorities are. Perhaps this is the end of TESL for those with nothing more than a BA from an English speaking country. Perhaps the industry will be able to demand a bit more from applicants. If this is the case then the industry could quite conceivably be somewhat tighter but more lucrative/professional.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

ECC hasn't closed any schools. The fact of the matter is, ECC had expected a bigger influx of new students after the Nova collapse. Last year, there was tons of overtime and a lot of schools were understaffed. Personnel went ahead and hired too many teachers this year and now ECC is over-staffed. Thus, what people are seeing from ECC is only that they have more than enough teachers and don't need to hire anymore. Prior to the economic meltdown, many teachers were indeed planning to leave after their contracts completed in March. More teachers will re-sign because of the poor economic situations back home. This has made the over-hiring situation even worse.

ECC will not go the way of Nova because their business practices are completely different. I think they are, however, losing money daily because of the ridiculously large amount of teachers doing sub-shifts because there's nothing else that they could be doing. ECC has other operations aside from eikaiwa which are very lucrative--ECC jr is probably their bread and butter.

From what I see in the many schools I've subbed at is that there's a new student being signed up at almost every shift I work.

A little off-topic, ECC is a sweet gig to be working at right now! I have no kids classes yet and I've taught only a few. I have two permanent early shifts. On my sub-days, I usually get sent to smaller schools and only teach about 2-4 40 minute classes per day. *knocks on wood*

[RollingStone]

[womblingfree]

[RollingStone]