Korean Job Discussion Forums

JimKl83 · Joined: 15 Sep 2009

Anyone have any advice on how you become an ESL recruiter in Korea or anywhere else for that matter? Any articles on how it's done would be most appreciated.

hellofaniceguy · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Location: On your computer screen!

No articles per se....
I don't think it would be a big money maker or else many would be doing it.
Many problems associated with it....one being "looking out for the people you place." You can't guarantee that the school will pay them, pay airfare, medical, etc..and when conflicts arise....you have no say in the matter...the school owner if he/she is a jerk will not honor the contract anyway.
Your customers are the schools, etc, not the teachers.
Too many jobs available for teachers who can find a job on their own. Sure, you'll have some schools who will use your services and some teachers...but the bottom line is many teachers get screwed over by schools with or without recruiters. And in some cases..the teacher creates the problems as well.
Hogwons are a business not a school. And if the students don't like the teacher...they drop out and of course the teacher will be let go.
If you are marketing other than hogwons...same problems happen. Universities have no shortage of foreign teachers.
Many on this site have tried being recruiters and failed....not because of their own doing.....how many recruites have been in business over 5 years? Not many I say. A few.
Schools pay what...100.000/200.000 Won for a teacher? You'd need to be placing many people just to make 3 million Won a month!

tokkibunni8 · Joined: 13 Nov 2009

Recruiters get paid a little more than that per teacher placed. It was 1.2million won for me when I came. It might be a little less now, maybe 700k-1m, but difinitely not 100k-200k.

If I recalled correctly, maybe two or three years ago, I read about a recruiter pulling in more than $1mill. It was one of the bigger, well known one. Can't remember which one. But, it does come with a lot of work.

CrikeyKorea · Joined: 01 Jun 2007 Location: Heogi, Seoul

Recruiters make 50% of one month's salary- or thereabouts, I have some friends that are recruiters, i get 300-400,000won per person that i recommend to them that gets a job, so actually the amount is quite high, but the teacher must stay for 3 months or they must pay that back,.

Rutherford · Joined: 31 Jul 2007

I'm good friends with a recruiter. It's not an easy job because, as previously stated, the schools are your customers and your first task is attracting their business and keeping them happy. At the same time, my friend likes to help the teachers she places as much as possible, which often means she has to act as the very polite mediator between the hogwan bosses and the often needy, uninformed foreign teachers.

I don't think it would be an easy job to get into as a foreigner unless you have a Korean partner who can do the work of building relationships with the school directors.