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skk1153
Joined: 29 Jun 2012
Location: Chicago, IL
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 Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 7:03 am Post subject: Best recruiters for public school positions |
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| I was told that public school positions with EPIK, GEPIK, or SMOE are the most reliable in terms of conditions and stability. I heard that Morgan Recruiting is good, but I notice they do a lot of private school placements as well. I was hoping people could recommend the best recruiters specifically for public school positions? |
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Keeper
Joined: 11 Jun 2012
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 8:56 am Post subject: Re: Best recruiters for public school positions |
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| skk1153 wrote: |
| I was told that public school positions with EPIK, GEPIK, or SMOE are the most reliable in terms of conditions and stability. I heard that Morgan Recruiting is good, but I notice they do a lot of private school placements as well. I was hoping people could recommend the best recruiters specifically for public school positions? |
Alot of people like Korvia. All they do is public schools. I tried them out and didn't really click with the recruiter. It's rather funny because when interviewed you try to be as upbeat and energetic as possible but the recruiter looked bored and tired. They were very knowledgeable but just not very friendly. If you try them expect to wait at least one week before they contact you. |
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rayne
Joined: 05 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:53 am Post subject: |
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I wouldn't recommend Korvia because I had a bad experience with them. They pulled the bait-and-switch technique with me.
First, they seemed nice and everything. They did lie and say I can only use one recruiter for GEPIK (not true, I knew that from the beginning. For EPIK/SMOE you can only use one recruiter but not for GEPIK). I did very well on the interview. After they confirmed that I have all my documents they suddenly stopped replying to my emails (I asked for updates a couple of times and I told them I was basically interested in ALL of their job postings that I saw on their site and facebook). Finally, after a month, they replied and said that the schools can't hire me because they want someone already in Korea (okay, I can believe that), or people who already have their own apartment (I don't believe that so much since GEPIK is supposed to pay for your apartment) and some other ridiculous lies. Then they suggested hagwons. I didn't even know that they did hagwons. I was pretty intent on public schools but I said if I had to come to it, I would do hagwons but I insisted that she keep trying to find a PS job. After some more back and forth she stopped replying to me for a week or two and then tried to convince me to do hagwons again. Another round of ignoring and then she came back and told me to contact different recruiters. Right. At the beginning she said I am not "allowed" to us multiple recruiters, now she's telling me to do this so she can get rid of me.
I was really disappointed in Korvia because of the bait-and switch.
Some other recruiters I would NOT recommend is EZ English, Hands Korea and GA Education. They were the top 3 worst recruiters over the 25+ recruiter I contacted.
I haven't secured a job yet so I really can't suggest any "good" recruiter. Half of the recruiters I contacted didn't respond back and half of the ones that did stopped responding after a while. |
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zenger
Joined: 07 Jun 2012
Location: Illinois
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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| what specifically made EZ english bad? |
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rayne
Joined: 05 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| zenger wrote: |
| what specifically made EZ english bad? |
It was mainly the rudeness of the recruiter. When he first called me, he didn't tell me what he wanted and the first thing he said was, "Do you have your documents?" But I had no idea who he was and he consistently had an angry, gruff, huffy puffy tone of voice so it was difficult to hear what he said. When I asked who he was he said, "EZEnglishScott (his name) doyouhaveyourdocuments". He couldn't really pronounce "z" and the "glish" part of English and he spoke way to fast so I couldn't understand and asked him again a couple of times until I finally realized who he was. He had not telephone etiquette. He would hang up randomly and whenever he called, he would not say who he was. He also forgot who I was a bunch of times because he would call asking me the same questions as he already did. And he would call, ask 1-3 questions, and hang up. Then an hour later call and ask a couple more questions and hang up. The lines never went dead by accident, I can hear him physically hanging up. It was really weird since he NEVER said who he was when I answer the phone and the questions were the basic ones that all recruiters ask through email or the phone.
Through skype, he gave me some job listings. It was the most awkward and odd conversation ever. We scheduled the 'interview' but he didn't call me at first. I waited 5-ish minutes and then I messaged him reminding him that we had an interview. He had no idea who I was and he was like, "check your email, when is our interview?" uhhh, I just told you it was now, buddy. 15 minutes after the scheduled time, he called me (it was voice chat, not video) and he was very rude, huffy puffy, and sounded like he was annoyed and mad at the world. He would just mumble angrily to himself at times or just be silent for minutes on end and then suddenly ask questions. He would also copy and paste random stuff on the chat and sometimes copy and pasted some job listings. But he didn't say anything about them. So I would wait a minute and then awkwardly ask about it. When he posted some job listings I awkwardly asked, "are those job listings for me?" (of course they were but he was silently breathing heavily in an angry sort of way so I had to break the silence) and he just said yes. More silence. Then i said, "I would like to apply for the first 2 please." He asked about the last one and I said I prefer not to work for an all boys school. Then he posted some more job listings, including the same all boys school. I said I like them all instead of the all boys school. Then it got silent, then he asked me some random questions. Silence. Then he said, "did you look at my job listing in *the city with the all boys school*" and I said yes. And then he didn't say anything. I think he assumed that that meant I would like to apply for that school too. At that point I really didn't care anymore. I was still being polite but I kind of wanted this to be over. It was so uncomfortable and weird. His rudeness was making me impatient so i just matched his silence. He finally said, "yes" in a very *final* tone of voice (it sounded like he was indicating that the conversation was over). So i awkwardly said, "okay... thank you... goodbye" And kind of waited a little bit to try and confirm that this skype conversation was over, but he didn't say anything so I hung up.
His emails were also quite rude. Well, some were rude, some were nonsensical. For example, his emails to me looked like this:
| Quote: |
pdf file makes corrupted file, as you can see (he copied and pasted a bunch of random symbols at the end of the email)
change to word document
send
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| Quote: |
m skype is telljay
talk ASAP
call m you revening mymorning (but he didn't tell me a time... took a while to get an actual time)
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In every other email he would ask me if I had/sent (sent to where???) my documents even though I told him I did tens of times. He obviously kept forgetting who I am. He forgot "interviews" with me and he would give me random job offers in places I didn't want (I wanted to work in Gyeonggi-do, he gave me a couple of Ulsan positions and other places). He also gave me some hagwons but I already told him I wanted public schools.
Sometimes he would send me a random email with copy-and-pasted information or a job listing but with no other message on it. I can only assume that I should reply saying if I want to apply for the job or not, but sometimes, for some things, I have no idea why he sent it to me or even how to respond.
He eventually stopped contacting me which was a great relief.
I've only heard bad things about EZEnglish, a lot of people told me everyone who works there is rude. I just didn't find out until I already contacted them. I contacted them because they were on the list of official GEPIK recruiters. It's so unbelievable that they are official recruiters. They are absolutely terrible and the worst recruiter I had the displeasure of communicating with.
I am a polite person so I managed to continue being polite throughout my interaction with this guy but I wouldn't know what would happen if someone lost their patience with this guy. He seemed consistently annoyed/angry throughout the whole thing, it looks like he hates his life or something. [/quote] |
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missty
Joined: 19 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting you say Korvia and EZ English were your worst recruiters, as I had my most success with them personally. I think I even had the same guy as you for EZ English. His written English was shocking, but he offered me some good places and I would have taken one school's offer through him, but Korvia had a better school for me so I took that one instead.
I'm not saying your experiences aren't valid, I'm sure they both aren't perfect, and Korvia did take ages to initially respond to my first email. But I guess everyone has different experiences with different companies.
I'd also recommend Worknplay. I was only in contact for them a bit at the end of my job search, but the guy I was emailing was friendly and prompt and managed to get some interviews lined up for me. |
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RLib
Joined: 17 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 3:51 am Post subject: |
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Korean Horizons is great and they work with public schools all over South Korea. They're very professional and Alistair, the recruiter I worked with, always responded to my emails quickly and always had several options for me.
Korvia is decent and my recruiter did try hard to land me a position, although it ultimately didn't work out. I do agree that it can take some time to get the ball rolling with them, though.
Teach ESL Korea is also good. They partner with other Korea recruiters though, and EZ English (and Scott) are one of them. But, TESLK works as an intermediary between you and EZ English, so as long as you make sure to keep Dan from TESLK cc'ed on all of your emails with their affiliated recruiters, and keep on your toes, things would probably be fine. I also had a fairly bad experience with EZ English, but it was partly my fault b/c I wasn't cc'ing TESLK on all of our emails. EZ English does have a lot of pubic school positions, though. |
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isitts
Joined: 25 Dec 2008
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 4:16 am Post subject: Re: Best recruiters for public school positions |
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| skk1153 wrote: |
| I was told that public school positions with EPIK, GEPIK, or SMOE are the most reliable in terms of conditions and stability. I heard that Morgan Recruiting is good, but I notice they do a lot of private school placements as well. I was hoping people could recommend the best recruiters specifically for public school positions? |
Korvia. |
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rayne
Joined: 05 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 10:28 am Post subject: |
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| missty wrote: |
Interesting you say Korvia and EZ English were your worst recruiters, as I had my most success with them personally. I think I even had the same guy as you for EZ English. His written English was shocking, but he offered me some good places and I would have taken one school's offer through him, but Korvia had a better school for me so I took that one instead.
I'm not saying your experiences aren't valid, I'm sure they both aren't perfect, and Korvia did take ages to initially respond to my first email. But I guess everyone has different experiences with different companies. |
Haha, don't worry about it, I wouldn't doubt if you or anyone else had a good experience with Korvia (EZ English though... I would have more trouble believing... the experience was just that bad). I read a lot of great reviews on them before contacting them. I also read a lot of bad reviews on them, but I think my experience was one of the worst due to the bait-and-switch which is the number one dealbreaker when it comes to recruiters.
For EZ English though, you said his emails were shocking, do you mean how bad the English was or was the tone of the emails negative as well? I usually give non-native language users a break but besides the negative tone, the extent of how carelessly he wrote the emails also exhibited a negative vibe. It was also obvious in many emails that he didn't know who I was. Most of my emails were replied from his emails so he didn't even have to search his past emails, he could have just read the quoted messages below.
There are many people who got a job from a recruiter but their experience overall was still negative.
Even if I had gotten a job through EZ English, I would have still given them a bad review because of the experience itself. |
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missty
Joined: 19 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| rayne wrote: |
| missty wrote: |
Interesting you say Korvia and EZ English were your worst recruiters, as I had my most success with them personally. I think I even had the same guy as you for EZ English. His written English was shocking, but he offered me some good places and I would have taken one school's offer through him, but Korvia had a better school for me so I took that one instead.
I'm not saying your experiences aren't valid, I'm sure they both aren't perfect, and Korvia did take ages to initially respond to my first email. But I guess everyone has different experiences with different companies. |
Haha, don't worry about it, I wouldn't doubt if you or anyone else had a good experience with Korvia (EZ English though... I would have more trouble believing... the experience was just that bad). I read a lot of great reviews on them before contacting them. I also read a lot of bad reviews on them, but I think my experience was one of the worst due to the bait-and-switch which is the number one dealbreaker when it comes to recruiters.
For EZ English though, you said his emails were shocking, do you mean how bad the English was or was the tone of the emails negative as well? I usually give non-native language users a break but besides the negative tone, the extent of how carelessly he wrote the emails also exhibited a negative vibe. It was also obvious in many emails that he didn't know who I was. Most of my emails were replied from his emails so he didn't even have to search his past emails, he could have just read the quoted messages below.
There are many people who got a job from a recruiter but their experience overall was still negative.
Even if I had gotten a job through EZ English, I would have still given them a bad review because of the experience itself. |
I think his emails were him being careless because when I spoke to him his English was good. They had bad spacing and spelling and it was just weird and difficult to read. He always addressed me personally though, and was prompt and quick with showing me new jobs/replying.
I also spoke to him on the phone a couple of times and everything was ok, and I wouldn't say he was too negative or anything. But maybe I just don't care so much about that stuff as I've been in Korea a while and forgive a lot for non native speakers.
I can definitely see where you're coming from though, as if he hadn't been offering me new places every day then I would have dropped him merely b/c of his really bad emails! |
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Chalmers
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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| worknplay |
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