Korean Job Discussion Forums

[krats1976]

I'm not having much luck finding a contract that I'm happy with so I'm thinking about going through FTUnion. Has anyone else used them and if so, was it a good or bad experience? Any help you can give me here would be great!

[Loyal]

I havn't got a clue bud sorry,

but if you find out,

how about letting me know, by posting up a review of `em!
http://www.eslsource.com/eslsource/agent_View.cfm/AGE_ID/7851

(okay sorry, i know its useless PR post, this is!)

but GSMC got a good report from one users.
http://www.eslsource.com/eslsource/agent_View.cfm/AGE_ID/7A53

[Clutch Cargo]

I used FT Union and didn't have any dramas with them. They were helpful but the whole process seemed to take ages (4 - 6 weeks) from the first contact to the departure date. May have been because I hate waiting, and I changed my desired destination a couple of times in the interval which probably didn't help. I had some contract specifications that I wanted them to ensure were on the contract such as Mon to Fri, finish early etc. Ended up teaching kindergarten, oh well. There was plenty of communication between us, right up to the point where I faxed the signed contract (amended 3 times), after that they sort of went on radio silence and it was hard to get a departure date out of them. It all ended up being 2 weeks after the date I was promised I would be leaving. Everything took longer than I was promised it would. When I got here I recieved a 'Speaking Korean for Dummies' email from them with an alphabet with phonetic translation. For example, the sound 'Ah' in Korean was given the phonetic translation "Ah - as in A Social Reject." Hope they weren't trying to tell me anything. This is probably the same sort of deal with most recruiters, but as far as having excellent English and being helpful then they would probably be a good choice if you had to use such services. But I go along with many other posts that a recruiter can only know so much about a particular school, and in some cases not much, so it's probably up to you to contact other teachers in any potential new workplace. I'm lazy and tend to leave such things up to chance.
Good luck.

[philipjames]

My experience is that the FTUnion is unreliable. Their adverts say things like "It's Not Fair: We Have All the Best Jobs." But the truth is, although they promise big things they grossly oversell themselves. I was very disappointed by their amateur approach and went to another agency for a job.....

In fact, I had a complication at my last job, and Stephanie had promised to help me with my very complicated situation, then, without any warning she took off to the US for several weeks leaving me in a real predicament. I was in a real crisis and they left me hanging. They wouldn't even give me her email address or phone number to contact her about my situation. The young Canadian guy there was hopeless, didn't know the first thing.

He even had that extremely annoying Tae Han Mingook chant as his phone jingle when you called him on his cell. Altogether a very unsatisfactory experience.

And what's with calling themselves the Foreign Teacher's Union??!! How grossly misleading to any foreigner searching for assistance in time of need. They're not a union at all. They're a recruiting agency, as unscrupulous as the next.

That's my experience anyway.
I'm not saying don't use them, just don't expect much.