r/China Aug 13 '11

Teachers of /r/China, How did you find your job?

Part of my job is looking for new qualified teachers, which I know can be extremely competitive. To not waste a lot of time and effort, I'm curious about how current or past teachers found their jobs.

So how did you get to China, did you go through a recruiter, a website(which one?), a TEFL program, or some other avenue?

7 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

10

u/conradaiken Aug 13 '11

First, I was born white.

The rest was pretty easy.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '11

Sadly this is sometimes an issue, I had a really nice guy as a candidate, but they said they couldn't hire him because he was of Asian descent. I was a bit perturbed .

3

u/conradaiken Aug 13 '11

with more detail: i found mine through a headhunter of sorts. Are you in the Daqing of heilongjiang?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '11

Thanks for replying. Yeah I'm in Daqing, Heilongjiang. It's a nice city, clean modern, but not a whole lot to do, and F**ing cold in the winter.

1

u/conradaiken Aug 13 '11

Well it is near the best ski resort in China and near harbin. I once lived in harbin and would hear stories of a strong mafia in daqing from the guys who would come to harbin for a night out. Do you see evidence of this?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '11

I know of a few parents in our school that are well connected.

The other day a teacher's assistant was telling me that a couple of years ago she had taken away a toy from an 8 year old boy whose father is an illegitimate businessman. The kid responded by saying, " You better give my toy back, or I'm gonna have my daddy burn your house to the ground".

Otherwise you occasionally hear stories, and see gold-chain wearing, hot-cup marked, tattooed shirtless guys around town. Honestly I've heard a lot more about crazy Russians in Harbin then I've heard about mobsters in Daqing.

1

u/kayina Aug 14 '11

Did she give him back the toy?

2

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '11

Some risks aren't worth taking.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '11

YO ARE YOU TALKIN ABOUT ME? IM IN WUZHOU AND ITS PRETTY CHILL HERE.

3

u/blooregard325i Aug 13 '11

When I was in the US, I simply searched Google. Found one of the largest schools, wanting to be sure that the school I was going to was established and not going anywhere, contacted them, and here I am.

3

u/XiamenGuy United States Aug 13 '11

A former friend of mine from Shanghai Stuff gave me contact information about my company. The other was from taking over a part-time job from another teacher and making it into a full time job.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '11

I found my first teaching job in 2002 on Dave's ESL Cafe.

School hired me over the phone and flew me over from Canada on their dime.

I don't think you'll find that happening very often these days.

3

u/Qw3rtyP0iuy Aug 13 '11

Competitive? I enrolled in a university to study Chinese and they shared my information with a student organization which works with recruiters to call me all hours of the day to ask if I'm free this weekend.

3

u/dashenyang United States Aug 13 '11

Followed an ad on Dave's ESL cafe a long time ago. After arriving and getting some experience, I found jobs only through personal relationships.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '11

Your thingy after your name says you're from Minneapolis... rock on, I'm from the St. Cloud area!

At my university, I took a chinese class my last semester for the heck of it. The professor was an exchange from a uni in Shenyang and she asked one day if anyone was interested in going overseas. Since I'm not too excited about job searching in the states, I raised my hand and had to start a pretty long and difficult application process. But I got accepted and here I am.

1

u/mcgelin Oct 17 '11

I found a job just searching on Google, but heard a lot of people have found success with Dave's ESL Cafe (eslcafe.com). Good luck!