Korean Job Discussion Forums

[big_fella1]

To the OP, I have thought about your strategy before of vetting hagwons. I am currently doing a DBA, I have an MBA and I ran 2 gas stations with convenience stores succesfully and would still be doing it today if I wasn't so stubborn regarding rent for my sites.

I concluded that the only way your model would work would be for the schools doing the correct thing to get a free teacher and the teacher to pay the recruiting fee. But this violates Korean law, it is illegal for a jobseeker to pay a recruiter.

There are many legal issues with starting businesses in Korea, the advantage Koreans have is they know which laws they have to follow (e.g. severance) and which they can ignore (e.g. pension and health insurance through the IC scam). You will have to follow all laws, making you uncompetitve with your competition.

I wish you luck, but I think you are choosing a tough business. If your projections disagree with mine, I'd love to be proved wrong, as it may encourage me to try some of the other ideas I've thought of.

Good luck!

[sbpolyhr]

Just an update and another request for help.

As when I opened the hagwon, I have found that laws governing the opening of a business often are not well-adapted to foreigners or some related businesses. In this case, the owner of a business which connects individuals with jobs (a recruiter) must have a sort of social welfare certificate (사회복지). This will take a year to obtain. In the meantime, we'll have to open with the business owned by someone else and me as an employee - "buying" the business back later once I get the certificate. This was not good news, but what can one do. It does make me wonder about the number of recruiting agencies...Those that are owned by foreign ESL teachers who set up business abroad would not be affected, but any LOCAL branches of that business must also be registered in Korea. I wonder if they are. Korean-owned recruiting companies would have to be owned by an individual with this certificate. Proper registration should be posted at the bottom of their homepages, but I note that many sites do not have it...including some of the larger ones. Sometimes I wonder if I am too much a Boy Scout.

Speaking of being good, it turns out that finding hagwons that fit all of my criteria for a clean hagwon is pretty difficult. Despite this, teachers at some of these academies are happy, despite say...not receiving housing or not being registered as directly employed. Perhaps I need to down-grade my plan to: 1) being completely honest about the situation, 2) verifying the happiness level of the teachers at that hagwon, and 3) being able to provide a fair number of teacher contacts at that hagwon for verification (accessible by email to potential teachers). Any thoughts?

Finally, a request for assistance...does anyone know of any good Korean nationals (not former teachers or kyopos) who work for recruiting agencies? By "good" I mean that they are diligent and upstanding individuals.

Thanks!

[thegadfly]

... so it took you about 3 weeks to go from someone full of "integrity" to someone willing to lower your standards in order to make some money -- kinda what Ttompatz said in his original post...and you jumped all over him and called him bitter....

...more like the Oracle at Delphi....

[Paddycakes]

[ttompatz]

[sbpolyhr]

Clearly it was a mistake to post on Dave's and think that I might get constructive responses.

In my message, I stated what I have observed about hagwons and from meeting with teachers at different hagwons, then I asked for advice. What do people think about it? I did not say HOW I was going to do things, but immediately I am attacked.

It seems to me that many who post here are just looking to argue and express anger. I appreciate the few helpful comments I received, but I'm done trying to get advice from "the community" as those who post here mostly represent a small disgruntled portion of that community.

[beentheredonethat777]

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[cabeza]

Well, my 2 cents.
IF you could pull it off, an ethical agency, with the teachers interests as the main concern, you would be very successful. You would stand out head and shoulders above the usual shysters that make up a large part of the industry.
Word of mouth would get around very quickly.

But i suppose that would be a very big "If".
I don't know the ins and outs of that part of the industry, but I imagine that it would be nigh on impossible to verify schools/hagwons.

So yeah, it would be great as a newb to go through an agency and know for sure that the school you interview with is above board and that the agent actually has your back. But i have no idea how you could actually do that AND be competitive with what looks like a very crowded market. Though you are in the industry so you must have some ideas.

Good luck to you. For all teachers's sakes I hope you are successful.

[NYC_Gal 2.0]

It's also a good idea to contact former employees. Sometimes current employees are afraid to say the truth because their bosses are breathing down their necks.

[beentheredonethat777]

[BigBuds]

It can be done and has been done in the past.

As of last month, I have owned a hagwon in Korea for ten years now.

I also opened the first foreign owned recruiting company in Korea, Duff Recruiting. I worked along side EFLLAW ( www.efllaw.com ) until it scaled things back when the main guy moved to another country. I was helping out many teachers in Korea who were screwed over (not teacher's a I had placed).

I ended up with my own forum on their old site for the simple fact that I made a point of follow all of Korea's laws, vetting all schools and teachers thoroughly. Back in the day, they were pretty much the only legal recourse for advice and help with the Labor board for teachers.

You can search for my recruiting company on here, Duff Recruiting.

I have scaled back my recruiting work since my son was born to spend more time with him but still make good money from it from schools that have stuck with me because I don't bend the rules. I haven't had to advertise in years now as word of mouth has kept a steady stream of applicants coming. I also get new schools wanting to work with me but knock most back due time constraints.

It's a hell of a lot of work to build up that kind of reputation. Be prepared to spend many nights away from home traveling all over Korea to vet schools, meet directors to explain absolutely everything, check out apartments, picking teachers up from airports, the list goes on. You will need precise translations of absolutely everything to make sure there are no "miss-communications", and double, triple, quadruple check everything with schools and directors.

If you are married with kids, I definitely say don't do it. There are just not enough hours in the day. If you don't have kids, you'll have time but spend a lot of it away from your wife.

Also, be prepared for pissed off Korean recruiters. I has my recruiting website hacked by them more times than I can remember. My web guy even traced the hacks directly back to some Korean recruiting company's offices. They didn't even try to hide it, and surprisingly for the most wired country in the world, they have pathetic and/or no laws regarding things like hacking. Basically, there was nothing I could do about it and they knew it. In the end, I had to abandon my website.

I can give you some pointers if you wish. Just PM me.

It can be done but very few are willing to put in the hard work, effort and time to do it. I know of only one other who has done it.