Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lordflyte]

Hi, I have passed the interview with SMOE (about three weeks ago) and I expect my apostilled criminal record check to be ready on monday. My agent, John Kim (eslseoul) says that he is sure that if I send off my documents next week I'll get a placement. However, I'm not sure that I trust him and I don't want to risk my expensive and extremely hard to compile set of documents when the places might all fill up.

To be honest I'd rather a normal hours (no later than 6pm) hakwon job in the seoul metropolitan area, but it seems like there is a lot of applicants at the moment and despite my tefl qualification and 18 months of experience no other agencies have responded to me yet.

Would you risk sending your documents off in this situation? I heard SMOE cut alot of jobs at the last minute last year, but I also heard that they are having trouble filling their placement this year. What do you think I should do?

[eljuero]

I can sympathize with feeling a bit uneasy sending off the documents. It was a real pain getting everything together and fairly expensive as well (FEDEX etc..).

Unfortunately, you've got to take the plunge to get a public school job. You'll be in limbo while the docs are in transit and until the recruiter gets a contract out to you but there's not much you can do.

I didn't feel a %100 cool with my SMOE recruiter but took the chance - some of this is the weird cultural gap in communicating but if you're coming to Korea that's what you can expect as long as you're here.

I would advise you to make copies of everything. Digitally scan everything to your USB/hard drive. In the even of a disaster you can more easily recreate what you have already......

BTW, If you've had the interview w/ SMOE you're pretty much in the clear from my experience. Good luck.