In response to my advising of caution when taking an Angelina's job, Kcanuck wrote:
Raoul, darling I know you don't like Angelina's but being that I am in an Angelina's job, I thought I should say something.
I earn 4500RMB/month for 16 hrs. a week, no English corners, no having to judge anything unless I want to; there is an 8,000RMB contract completion bonus and school supplied computers in our apt. From what I'm finding in the small-medium cities, public schools (advertising without recruiters) the salary and conditions offered are quite similar to what I negotiated through Angelina's. Best bet is to do as much research as possible and talk to the FTs, in my case, Vegemite was already here and I had a good idea of what I could expect.
Angelina's is one of my more highly esteemed recruiters, but this is admittedly a bit like standing before a sewage treatment pit and saying that one particular turd smells slightly better than the others.
IMHO 4500 per month for 16 hours in a small obscure city is a pretty ho-hum job. However, a lot of people take jobs like this (which, of course, is why schools continue to get away with offering 4500 per month for 16 hours a week...) and are reasonably satisfied.
Fair enough. If you're happy with this, my biggest issue is that I can't see any reason to bring in a middleman who may or may not come back and bite you later, to take a job just like millions of others hanging out there all over the internet begging to be taken. Without Angelina's hand in your pocket, this job may well have paid 5000 per month or more.
There are hundreds (at least!) of sites that advertise EFL jobs in China and elsewhere. It's quite easy to find them. A great many of them are free to advertise on; it's not really necessary to contribute to the Bad Haircuts For Dave Sperling Fund just to market a teaching job. What does it say about a school and their job if they're too lazy/feeble-minded/afraid of their karma/ashamed of their crappy pay/worried about the dismal town they live in/etc. to find some and post an ad, and must instead turn to places like Angelina's to pull you in, do their dirty work for them, and tell you how wonderful it will be there? Personally, I just can't think of a good spin to put on this. Not one that holds water, anyway.
As you can tell, I really hate recruiters.
They exploit the numerous faults of a system that really shouldn't need them in the first place. In my years in China, I've heard about as many complaints about recruiters as I have about the schools themselves. At their best, IMHO recruiters are like giant ticks, feasting on the lifeblood of our business. At their worst, they're like giant ticks who pass you various horrible diseases while feasting on the lifeblood of our business. Recruiters may kiss your ass while they're courting you for a job, but don't be fooled:
they don't work for us. None of them. They work for the schools that pay their commissions, and their loyalties will always ultimately lie with them. The schools themselves are dodgy enough; there's no need to add on this extra layer of potential problems.
The fundamentals of running a school aren't that different than any other business, or at least they shouldn't be. If you want to hire employees, you market your position and you offer the potential employees a competitive wage/benefit package and a decent work experience. If you don't want to do this, you should find another line of business more compatible with your ethics and profit-margin ambitions...like selling heroin in primary school yards.
I understand that many public schools and universities must pay salaries that are heavily controlled by the local Education Bureaus. However, I can't see where this entails any obligation on our part to accept it. If these schools go long enough and are unable to find teachers to fill their classes, the Bureaus will have no choice but to change their policies. This will be a good thing for us.
Saying "Well, I got a job through Recruiter X, and I'm happy enough!" is IMHO not an adequate defense of the system. It may mean very well indeed, but it simply perpetuates a system that is devoid of any standards of any kind, pays us marginal salaries, treats us as rights-less chattel, and makes vast piles of money for a lot of corrupt, incompetent, baijiu-swilling buttheads at the expense of our time and effort and intelligence.
I PROMISE you...if all of us will stand up and tell the recruiters to f*ck off and crawl back under their respective rocks, the schools WILL find a way to reach us directly, toot sweet. Hey, they might even re-think their salaries and benefits in the process. If all of us stop taking just-barely salaries and demand some parity for our work, they WILL have to re-think their salaries and benefits.
Of course, if this happens a lot of fly-by-night operators and crooked officials would have to get out of the alleged-education business and leave it to those schools who maintain real standards, hire real teachers, and pay real wages. And that would be just awful, wouldn't it?
Sadly, I don't really expect this to ever happen, not in China. There's a laowai teacher born every minute.
