Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Beeyee]

I agree with northway on this one.

CDI will pay well for qualifications and experience which is more than can be said for most hagwons. I have 5 years teaching experience and CDI pay me a salary which reflects that. As I mentioned on another thread, I get pension, health insurance and I am taxed at the correct rate (just over 1%). They paid for my airfare with no issues and pay me 400,000 a month for housing. I'm on an E-2 visa and work around 102-108 hours a month.

If I were the OP and couldn't land a University gig, CDI would be next on my list.

[Mix1]

Even at public schools (SMOE) they'll use every trick in the book to knock you down the pay scale. They want people with Master's and experience but they don't want to pay for it.

Even related Master's get shafted. A friend had an English Lit Masters, so they said it "didn't count" unless it was just a regular "English" Master (no specialization? yup that's what they said they wanted). A month later a different friend had a Masters in English (like they said they wanted before) but now the criteria was "English Education", even a friend with a Masters in Education didn't fare any better on the payscale. This was all from the same organization.

Expect many offers to be maybe 2.0 to 2.3 million.

But, remember the recruiter isn't really on your side, they just want to fill the job fast and collect their bonus. So, they won't really bargain with a school much to boost your pay, in fact they will usually work with a school to feed you the lowball figure and accept it.

If you aren't in a hurry, and do well on some phone interviews, put out a higher figure. They CAN pay more, they just don't want to in most cases. Some schools simply pay more than others, but either way they will try to lowball and feed you all kinds of excuses. If they really like you, you'd be surprised how they can instantly come up with money to pay you more.
If nothing happens, then lower your figure.

The market is the way it is partly because there is a glut of applicants, and partly because said applicants don't even try to negotiate and take the first crap offer they get. Unless you are really desperate and have loan sharks about to kill you, wait it out for a decent offer.