Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ActionInternational]

Hey, how was your experience in trying to get a job through a recruiter/agent? (Whether you got that job or not, let us know your experience!)

Take a POLL, and then post your reasons here... (plus, would you go through this recruiter again for your next job?)

POLL Guide (simple, you get the idea):
---------------------------------------------
Excellent! Great service! No complaints whatsoever! Reliable and responsible!
Good! Some minor issues, but good overall.
So-so... Not bad, but could be better in many ways...
Bad. Helped me somewhat, and then forgotten about me.
Terrible! Wouldn't wish this recruiter on my worst enemy!

[chronicpride]

I feel that all people can post whatever they like, how ever they like, and for whatever they like, but I just notice that you have a lot of different threads on acquiring feedback on recruiters. Not the usual, 'who is good', 'who do you recommend', but more of 'how can they service you better', 'what would a good recruiter do?'. As if you are drafting up business models for getting into the racket.

That's fine, if you are, and I commend you with soliciting teacher feedback, beforehand.

But, as an ex-recruiter, I caution you about getting into this, if you are considering it. It takes a certain person to do it. And I thought that I was that person. Having the enthusiasm to help others won't be enough. Sheer aspiration to make money isn't enough. Not unless you are willing to compromise your values as a person.

I can go on in length, but for every one great match-up that you make with a good school and good teacher, you've got 2 or 3 other horror stories. And they build up and eat away at you over time. Being asked by a director, 'hmm..his picture looks good, but I can only see his face. Is he fat? Can you please call him and ask if he is fat?'. Things like that wear on you. Or a university saying 'wow, this guy has a MA TESOL from an ivy league school, has 4 yrs ESL experience in Korea, great references, but...his picture...hmm, don't you think he looks a little angry expression? I think we'll take the 24yr old girl with no experience and the nice smile.' or the teacher that you call and interview while sitting next to the hogwan director and you explain all of the job details, which he agrees to, and comes over here and realizes that he doesn't like the gig after all, and tells half the town and blames it all on you for saying that I originally told him that it was supposed to be a proof-reading gig? Sorry guy, that was one of the other 10 recruiters that you got me mixed up with.

Or the guy from England that you actually decide to check references on, and call up the UK teacher association he listed as being a part of, and they say that he has been banned from the association due to sexual misconduct in the classroom. So you politely take a pass on him and he emails you a week later saying that he landed a job in Jinhae teaching kindy kids.

Or the guy that you speak with, and after 3-4 phone calls and several emails, you decide to represent him to a school. He shows up and he turns out to have an extreme case of OCD and comes to class 2 hours early to sanitize the classroom and desks, and berates the Korean teachers for not checking the locks on the doors and windows of each classroom, after each lesson.

Or the school that renegs on paying you the commission that they agreed to pay you, because the teacher is shorter than what he appeared to be in their picture. I suppose they wanted to pay per centimeter or something.

The couple that is in financial dire straits that you help out, let them stay in your bed, while you sleep on the couch, while you line up work, only for them to turn down 4 jobs due to schools not providing 2 bedroom apartments, which they were adamant over. Then you find them the 2 bedroom apartment gig, and they run 2 months later, because they want to start a job in China.

Or finding a perfect teacher for a school that requested for the teacher to fax the signed contract before couriering it along with his documents, and his fax machine went on the the fritz for a day, and wasn't able to send it right away. They took a pass on him, despite a flurry of calls in Korean and English to explain the situation.

Or you have a teacher sign with a school, send her documents to the school, get the visa sponsorship letter back from immigration and the same day receive an email that she wants to cancel and go to the school that her friend works at, who is now hiring, and leaving you holding your dick in your hands.

Or the good, sweet teacher that you introduce to a good school, she signs, start the documents through immigration, and another recruiter sees her old profile on a job site, swoops in, hard-sells her and convinces her to cancel and go to the school that he is peddling.

I got more...about schools, recruiters, and teachers. These cases are not once in awhile, either. Everyday is different. Being service-oriented to teachers is the easy part. Having your personal values degraded before your eyes and seeing how long you can compromise yourself, is the hard part.

Kudos to the ones that operate a small tight operation with a few good tolerable schools and good resource of teachers. You still have to deal with the shit, but you can keep it contained by doing it P/T and sporadically, to complement your day job.

Thankless job? Well, I'd say more wasteful job than anything. Although I retained some good recruiting contacts that I made, to help me find my current job and some side work, I'd rather leave it to others to do. If you want to help people, you'd find more rewards in teaching free lessons at the orphanages all over Korea.

Sorry for the rant. It was long overdue for me to get that out since I gave up the biz, and I just want to give you or anyone the flipside of recruiting, in the event that you are qualifying it as a business venture.

[shawner88]

My first recruiter, Mr. Wong, was a Chinese Canadian (I'm from NYS). He was the shadiest character but he really made me laugh with all of his "teacher like priest" stories about Korea. That said, he virtually ignored me when I ran into trouble.

[TECO]

don't use a recruiter.

come to the country you want to teach in with a couple of thousand dollars in your pocket.

walk around, take a look at some schools, talk to teachers and choose a neighborhood you think you'll like to live in.

kind of like not buying a car without first seeing and test-driving it.

[Saxiif]

First one was an incompetant *beep*. It took forever to get any information out of them, there was so many delays that I had to call them on a payphone right outside of the Korean consulate in Boston to get info I needed for my visa applications

The second bunch were OK, but dropped the ball on getting my stuff moved.

[Dalton]

Good post Chronic. A sticky.

Sometimes I think everybody who works here for a couple years thinks they can be a recruiter. (Not referring to Chronic here so lay off.)

You have to research the school before you sign. If you involve a recruiter then you have to research the recruiter and any school they refer you to. That's twice as much work and twice the opportunity to make mistakes.

I think the best recruiters don't make any promises other than sending you jobs from their list. They can do nothing else. That's obvious. I think there are too many recruiters today. I think the insight that Chronic provided is reason to be cautious about an environment with too many recruiters.

Why use a recruiter at all is the real question?

Doing research here before starting a recruiting business may be a plan but ignoring questions from teachers here suggests a bad attitude right up front. I wouldn't use or reccommmend ActionInternational as a recruiter to anyone if that's what they are up to. I'd reccommend against it.

Who are you?
Why are you posting here?
What's with the officious sounding name?

If you can't lower yourself to answer these questions then I believe you'd be the recruiter to avoid.
Either that or your just screwing with everyone here.

So what's up actioninternational? Games or a lame attempt to evade paying Dave's to advertising a startup?

[lookingtoteach]

The one I used was okay, despite the calls at 2:00 in the morning, asking me if I would like to go skiing in Seoul with him at night cause it was romantic, and exaggerating how far Ansan was from Seoul. He did pick me up at the airport, drive me to the school, sit in on a meeting with my supervisor then drive me to my apartment, which was good.

[captain kirk]

First job I learned about the recruiter seeing an ad posted on a bulletin board at the Uni. It was a xerox copy saying, 'Want to make money in exotic Korea? Do you have a Ba diploma?', and so on. There were many international calls back and forth where it seemed he just wanted to chat, like a friendly uncle. Or a used car salesman. He beamed 'charisma' like that, florid-faced, like every moment is a family reunion.
When I landed it was night, I was in a foreign country. He wasn't so effusive. Not just to me but the other two guys in the yogwan near the airport, his crop. Now a yogwan room with a shady recruiter isn't exactly leading to good first impressions about what Korea's all about. I hate to admit it for any potential hecklers who might cackle, 'ha! you were ripped off' with hearty glee and a smirk. But right there he had our airfare reimbursements, and you know how much of a wad 70 man won bills looks like, a handful of green. And he quickly counted off his fee in the tip of the bill flicking way done here, helping himself to a major chunk of it as his 'fee for expenses'. I gave him a murderous look and sulked murderously and he looked murderous back and said that he 'might have to make my school wait for a few days' while he gave me some 'further acclimatizations' or 're-culturations' or 'indoctrination' or whatever the word was he used. It was like, 'drop the attitude, you're mine'. Before I was the pup of the boss to come, once delivered.
He had two people with him, Koreans. One seemed a girlfriend of a bouncer kind of guy, and the recruiter implied she was available. He knew we had money, of course, since he'd just handed over the remainder of our airfare reimbursements, after his surprise on the spot whopper deductions.
Looking around at the furnishings of a love hotel style yogwan, everything totally alien, the walls seemed to be pressing in, not only with the alien nation outside, but the 'seedy' national representatives in it. Next day he 'took us out for dinner'. It was some part of Seoul, everything looked dusty and dirty, the people looked formal faced and dressed, sombre, and seemed to hurry everywhere. It really looked like an episode of The Twilight Zone. And zombie people not quite right, or so it appears to the spaceman arrived from a different dimension. It was cold and winter and grey. Going up and down 'grey, dusty, dungeon-like' subway stairs to a Lotteria. He bought us a Lotteria burger, which seemed meagre compared to a quarter pounder from McD's back home. It looked like nothing, and the chips were thin, cold, and limp. And when I got to my school the boss seemed as seedy as the recruiter. But I had it all wrong, at least re; the boss. And Koreans look far different now than they did then. Because that boss took me to his hometown and father's house for Chusok, a totally traditional farm on the coast part- fishing part- farming life. His father was sick, but sitting around the floor table (no chairs like back home). It all seemed more 'off' than simply different then, but the 'ancestral home' at Chusok with all its charms implied Korea is simply 'different'. And pointed out the possibility that I might be 'askew'. Not personally, but how I was letting everything look. 'Not home'. 'ET not home' (ET=English teacher. Kids ever call you that? ).

[Homer]

Used a recruiter for my first job and he was fine.

Did a great job of preparing me and answering my questions.

He has since moved on to something else but when he was recruiting he was very professional about things.

[Lizara]

Mine found me a job, got the paperwork started on it, cancelled it for reasons that were never really explained to me, and then failed to either find me another job or return my degree. Granted, I was kind of stupid about a lot of things in this story, but still, it wasn't exactly a wonderful recruiter experience, and certainly didn't inspire me to try going through a recruiter my second time around.

[TECO]

you know, come to think of it, wasn't Derrek on this forum also reporting that his recruiter lost his degree?

[Dalton]

Most people I've met who came over via a recruiter were jerked around. Everyone I know who is a recruiter but one just sends people wherever. They don't give a crap. Most recruiters that have contacted me ignore my requests for location and work conditions even though they asked.

I have had personal experience with six recruiters. One is okay but their jobs are less than great. That recruiter says that only schools with problems hiring use recruiters. New schools, schools with bad reps, schools with bad conditions, schools on the ropes. The other five treated me like an idiot. Denying certain job conditions exist when many posted jobs and many people I knew had those conditions. Claiming pay and hours that were not rational. Taking me to jobs that had no correlation whatsoever to my requests and what they said the conditions of the job were. Failing to show up or showing up late for meets. Trying to coerce me into not looking for jobs on my own or through other recruiters. Implicitly or explicitly threatening to not help me if I turn down too many offers. Two seems to be the magic number. Expecting me to sit around while I wait to hear back from them about jobs or be taken to interviews. Meanwhile offers I like abound on the job boards. Trying to talk me into signing in concert with the director even though the job was specifically opposed to my clearly stated criteria. Even though the job was an obvious joke that no fool would accept.

Liars, petty con artists, greed driven.

The only good recruiter in my opinion is one that doesn't make any claims except giving your their job list as it pertains to what you want. If you don't know what conditions prevail here then you won't have much luck with that kind of recruiter. An experienced teacher can probably use a recruiter if they use their head but newbies are just shark bait. But then newbies don't know generally speaking so recruiters proliferate.

Why use a recruiter at all?
No one seems to be able to answer this question. I'm not surprised.

There are so many jobs but no recruiter has access to all of them yet some insist you to be exclusive to them? They just cut themselves out of the deal with that request. Recruiters excel at trying to maneuver you into a position where you feel you must sign. Recruiters that can't do this fail.

[mog]

No problems with mine. He has a good post on the Job Information Journal. Put me in a type of city I requested in type of hogwan I requested. Gave me information of a colleague in Seoul I can contact if I have problems.

Not the most perfect experience, but it was solid.

Most people use recruiters because I doubt it would occur to most people to go to a foreign country without a job. Plus, I'm guessing a good deal of people find the concept of working as an EFL teacher in advertisements, and then respond to that advertisement.

[ActionInternational]

Thanks to all! Results were mixed, some had good experiences, some had bad. I appreciated hearing balanced views from various teachers. I personally haven't gone through a recruiter when I got a teaching job in korea, but it definitely gave me a better understanding of the teacher-recruiter relationship. Some don't need a recruiter, but others found a recruiter to be useful. I find forums like this really helpful whenever I have a particular QUESTION. It was simply a matter of starting a NEW TOPIC with a SUBJECT HEADING, and then many teachers were more than willing to help me out! Cheers to all!

[JaphieR]

I used a few to get my job. Some were really scary. The one who got my job was really nice though. The other foriegn teacher at my school also used her and liked her.