Korean Job Discussion Forums

[smoggy]

Longbridge did it again - they booked me on the cheapest flight possible - Asiana. I depart from Phoenix at 8:30 pm, arrive in Los Angeles at 10pm and fly out to Seoul at midnight. I wait for 3hrs at the Seoul Airport and on to Daegu. My parents told me that due to this lousy flight, I could say forget it, and not go. I think that the recruiters and schools are throwing more obstacles on workers since they have so many to choose from. I don't trust recruiters after this experience, and will look on my own.

[myeo]

[smoggy]

I'm not sure about ECC Seongseo. I'm supposed to teach about 36 classes per week (40 mins. each) for a total of 144 classes. There is an hour of prep. time. I think I will be teaching about 5 hours (7 classes) plus all of the extra junk they throw at me. Possibly 14 hours of overtime. Many people tell me that ECC works you hard for little money.
The Airline will be ok, its just that my old parents have to take me to the airport, and it would be nicer to take me during the am. Also, I have heard quite a few bad things about this recruiter. At my age 51, I don't want to work so hard that I can't enjoy the travel and cultural experiences.

[Hannah23]

I was impressed by their website and saying all the right things but my opinion now is that they are quite unreliable and dishonest. They told me on a Monday that they were waiting to hear back from a school (i-sponge Daegu) to arrange an interview for me. I was told by Fred that he'd get back to my "asap with interview time." In the meantime I applied directly to some other schools, had a few interviews and liked one of them and decided I'd take it. On Thursday morning at 7am I got a call from the school (I had no idea that I was due to have this interview having received no prior warning from Longbridge) and on this particular morning I was asleep and feeling the worse for wear having been out for my friends bday the night before. I was croky and confused on the phone. After the initial confusion the interview consisted of this and this entirely, "you like kids?" Err yea I love kids. "we have one other Irish here. Ok I let you know." End of call. That day I got an email from Longbridge saying this;

'I just got an update from Mr. Kim, the director at I-Sponge Daegu and he is very satisfied with your interview! He would like to offer you the position and is convinced that you will be a great teacher within their team!'

First off I'm 100% sure it was a woman I was speaking to. I was very croaky and hungover and so confused on the phone, lots of 'who is this? Where are you? Why are u calling...'! definately not someone that little kids could understand and there's no way on earth that they could be possibly think that I'd 'be a great teacher within their team'. Anyway look that was my experience with Longbridge maybe for others it's different. It will be my first time heading to Korea and I applied direct to a school and accepted a position. My main concern to be honest was being collected at the airport and being able to comunicate well with my managers but a lot of the more reputable schools will take it as a given to pick you up from airport and my manager speaks perfect English so don't be afraid to apply direct to schools, cut out that middle man