Easy English Consulting

Oh no

2005-06-07T17:13:00.000+09:00

Uh-oh, it looks like I'm too busy to work here anymore. It's possible that this blog might not exist anymore then, as it's extremely unlikely that someone as humorous and clever will be found to replace me, certainly not an employee who will dare to compare this recruiting agency to Star Wars.
Well then, last words I suppose:

1) We're not bad! I've been here for five months and the company is an honest one. Whether you believe me or not is none of my concern, but I never would have put up with five months in a place that scammed teachers.

2) Recruiters only exist because the Korean visa system is, to be blunt, s*&t. Also, the hagwons here are privately owned, compared to the ones in Japan that are run top-down. Big companies will do their own hiring and send people off to do that; small companies don't know what to do and that's why they use us.

3) Please don't write 'you' as 'u' when applying for a job. "I would like to work at ur company" gets thrown out right away. As does "work at you're company". Ha.

4) Have fun. Stay here for a long time. Form a union. Change the visa system, and heal the often toxic atmosphere here.

Thanks!

Star Wars vs. Easy English Consulting

2005-06-03T19:12:00.000+09:00

From http://www.googlebattle.com

Star Wars - 45,000,000
Easy English Consulting - 820

Star Wars is better than Easy English Consulting. Not that I needed Googlebattle to tell me that.

Activist dovtor has to make a visa run

2005-05-26T15:06:00.000+09:00

Activist doctor has to make a visa run

May 26, 2005 ㅡ A German medical doctor who has been a vocal activist for North Koreans' human rights has been ordered to leave the country by the end of May because he has been here longer than the 90 days allowed for German citizens without visas.
A Justice Ministry official said Dr. Norbert Vollertsen's 90-day limit expired April 14. Extensions can be given if the applicant is ill or needs to stay for business reasons, but ministry spokesman Han Myong-kwan said Dr. Vollertson did not meet the criteria. "He had already overstayed his limit," Mr. Han said. "Unless he was seriously ill or had his entire family here, he wouldn't have received the extension."
An Immigration Bureau official confirmed that the doctor will be able to stay for another 90 days upon his return. Douglas Shin, Dr. Vollertsen's personal aide, said he will fly to Japan and return to Korea immediately.
A former aid worker in North Korea, Dr. Vollertsen was deported from the North in December 2000 for his criticism of the regime. Since then, he has been a highly visible activist in the South for the cause of North Korean refugees, and has often criticized Seoul's policies toward the North. This is the first time he has overstayed his 90-day limit.
An Immigration Bureau official said there were no political motives behind the decision to expel the doctor. "We asked him to leave the country only because he stayed longer than 90 days," the official said. "We didn't bring any political issues to this."

by Yoo Jee-ho, Moon Byung-joo <enational@joonang.co.kr>

Other positions

2005-05-18T18:49:00.000+09:00

Just created an ad to remind people that we don't just deal with public schools. Let's take a look and see which one looks best; I'll post it right here:

Basic Information
Job Type	full time
Name of Employer	Daejeon, Little America(대전)
Contact person	Mr.Park
Location	Taejon
Closing Date	ASAP
Needed person	3

Class Information
Students Type	Kindergarten,Elementary,
Students per Class	12
Working hours/week	30 hours/week
Working days	M-F
Time schedule	오전9:30에서 오후5:00 혹은 11:00오전 에서 오후 7:00 중 수업시간이 배정되고, 쉬는시간은 각각다름.

Benefit
Monthly salary	180-210만 Korean won
Bonus	One month salary
Type of Housing	single
Over time rate	20000 Korean won
Vacation	연48주계약 Days + Korean holiday
Airfare	round trip
Medical Insurance	50%
School or Housing photo
Comments

This one's not actually the best position, but it's in Daejon and those aren't all that easy to find. Anyway, this one's the featured - Position of the Day -

Busy

2005-05-10T19:50:00.000+09:00

Luckily we got that ad going last week, as this week I'll be out of the office for most of the day. I'm just stopping by for an hour or so to check on the mail and then I'm gone again. Niki's still here, recruitments are still being done, so no worries.

Being out of the office is fun.

Advertising

2005-05-06T17:05:00.000+09:00

앗싸~
We've started advertising on a place called Bogglesworld which is quite nicely run. Dave's ESL is the first place that comes to mind when thinking of ESL sites in Korea but there are quite a few professionally run places elsewhere as well.
http://bogglesworld.com is where our ad is running - not on the main page but on quite a few of the other ones.

It's May -0-

2005-05-03T18:52:00.000+09:00

Yep, it's May. We don't start hiring for public school positions until the end of the month. In the meantime there's quite a bit going on here, but mostly involving renovation. There's a hagwon downstairs and apparently we work together with them from time to time when our interests coincide.

Breaking news from the hagwon downstairs: apparently a student knocked over a plant pot down into the parking lot; luckily it didn't hit a car but instead landed right on top of the protrusion over the door. I saw it lying on the top a few days ago when I left. You heard it here first.

People who come to this page

2005-04-28T15:32:00.000+09:00

Nothing to do with recruiting today. We use something called Statcounter (www.statcounter.com) to see who comes to this page. The response is about as good as I expected - not as much as the main page but still not too bad. Check this out:

15 www.eslcafe.com/jobs/korea/index.cgi?re
7 www.blogger.com/publish-body.
3 hiteacher.com/ads/detail.php?siteid=67
2 www.eslemployment.com/dcforu
2 marksesl.com/Master%20Links%2
1 www.google.com/search?q=pyeongchon&a
1 hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/jobsearch/linko
1 tesol.net/links.cgi?FA=AdminMod
1 easyenglishcons.netfreehost.com/viewtopic.ph
1 www.tesol.net/teslrecruit.html
1 www.teachoverseas.ca/links/index.pl?read=171
1 hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/jobsearch/linko
1 www.tesol.net/links/Employment%20(Recru
1 www.teachoverseas.ca/links/admin_confi
1 hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/jobsearch/linko
1 korea.wikicities.com/wiki/Easy_English_Consulting
1 www.blogwise.com/admin/submissions/index.php?1114279763
1 www.search4blogs.com/bloggers/admin/ind
1 www.google.com/search?q=konglish&hl=en&
1 portal.eatonweb.com/country/Korea,%20South

I cut off the ends of some of the links that were rather unsightly. Long links make the page look like some problem arose when the page tried to load. No, just an ugly link.

Anyway, that's where everybody's been coming from recently! Just thought I'd share. You can also click on the links to see what country everybody's been coming from, what provider they're using, operating system, monitor resolution, etc. Nothing private of course like name and email address, but there's quite a bit you can find out by installing one of these counters. Don't forget that your internet browsing isn't as private as it may seem. Nor is ours. Unless you use an anonymous proxy, of course.

And now back to posting ads.

Public school positions from September

2005-04-25T16:22:00.000+09:00

This time around we have close to a hundred public school positions starting in September. The first week of September, that is. Last time we had a bit over sixty and it wasn't all that easy getting them all filled; this time we have even more and so we're starting early, posting on Hotjobs and other paid sites to try to get the widest exposure possible right away.

Korea intends to have one English teacher per school by the year 2009, so these positions are only going to increase. Personally I wonder if that isn't a bit late; sometimes it feels like the fervor for English education has already started to die down slightly. Not that the ESL industry will be going anywhere but according to the latest statistics English webpages are a mere 33% of the internet, down from a high of 85% in the nineties and still going down. In China 800 000 people start using the internet every single week.

For the industry here, that would just mean switching over to Chinese as well. Hagwons have already started adding Chinese to the curriculum and I expect it will just be another subject that people here are expected to study. Probably. The thing about Chinese that makes it easier to study is:

Prevalence of hanja in Korean vocabulary. 70% of the vocabulary in Korean originally comes from Chinese. Grammar is easy too.
Proximity. It's easy enough to just get on a plane and go to China for a week, stay for a while without using all that much money and coming back wherever. Not the same as packing your bags and going off to the States for a year or two. Prices there are cheaper too, so a student could easily take off to a city like Qingdao (靑島) and live for two weeks for somewhere just under 500 000 won.

Those are two of the factors that might make the Chinese language industry over here different from the English one. It's possible that schools and hagwons here might just stick with the if-you-want-to-learn-a-language-you-must-bring-native-speakers-over-on-one-year-contracts type of thinking that dominates the place now, who knows. We'll know in a few years.

As always, send applications or questions to esljob@hotmail.com.

PS salary for these positions goes from 1.7 to 2.4 million won depending on education and experience. I think they're hoping for a hundred people with master's degrees and a few years of education under their belt, but a bachelor's is enough to get a job there. The pay is lower than a hagwon at first for someone with no experience but goes up after a year and looks better on a resume. Usually more vacation time too. Public school vs. hagwon is always a difficult choice.

Where is everybody?

2005-04-21T15:08:00.000+09:00

Looks like everybody's stepped out of the office to do...something. Then phone calls begin coming in from here and there within the company:
"Is so and so there? Well, what about so and so?"
"No, that person's not here. Nor is the other one. Why?"
"Um...okay!" (hangs up phone)

Just in case anyone thinks that Korean companies look chaotic on the surface but everybody actually knows what's going on, it's not true.

Oh look, somebody just came back. Looks like she went out to buy stawberries. (shrug)

Where the links are

2005-04-20T18:03:00.000+09:00

Every once in a while we'll submit our site to a directory that requires a link in return. That's understandable. We'll put them all here with a small description of each as we go along.

THE LINKS

Blog Directory / Add Your Blog
The Google / Yahoo alternative

Two positions worth mentioning again

2005-04-19T17:26:00.000+09:00

We have a large number of positions on our site but there are two that are worth recommending as they are apparently quite good.

The first one is a school called GnB in Seoul which apparently is quite a low-stress environment:

Basic Information
Job Type	full time
Name of Employer	GnB school (서울)
Contact person	Miss Lee
Location	Seoul
Closing Date	ASAP/May 16th 2005
People needed	1

Class Information
Student Type	Elementary
Students per class	12
Working hours/week	30 hours/week
Working days	M-F
Time schedule	2~8pm Housing allowance optional

Benefit
Monthly salary	2.0millon Korean won
Bonus	One month salary
Type of Housing	single
Over time rate	16,000 Korean won
Vacation	10 Days + Korean holidays
Airfare	round trip
Medical Insurance	50%
School or Housing photo
Comments	용모단정,국내거주자 우선 - prefer a candidate already within the country, neat appearance.

The next one is a position that pays higher than most, and is quite a nice place. A lot of hagwons will attempt to reduce or eliminate benefits if the applicant is a Gyopo, but this one gives the same benefits regardless. They do prefer someone with a major in education though. Notice that they pay anywhere from 2.2 to 2.7 a month, which is normally unheard of:

Basic Information
Job Type	full time
Name of Employer	Pyongchon Poly( 경기/평촌)
Contact person	Robyn
Location	Kyeong gi
Closing Date	ASAP, April 25th
People needed	3

Class Information
Students Type	Kindergarten,Elementary,Middle
Students per Class	10
Working hours/week	30 hours/week
Working days	M-F
Time schedule	10-7pm / 2.4-2.7mil. 1-9pm / 2.2-2.4mil.

Benefit
Monthly salary	2.2~2.7 mil. Korean won
Bonus	One month salary
Type of Housing	single
Over time rate	15,000 Korean won
Vacation	10 Days + Korean holiday
Airfare	round trip
Medical Insurance	50%

Pyeongchon is located on line 4, just south of Seoul one stop before where lines 1 and 4 come together.

As always, send applications to esljob@hotmail.com.

Removing Konglish

2005-04-19T16:37:00.000+09:00

We've almost gotten all the Konglish off the site. The only bits left are the ones that I can't get at - the windows that pop up when applying on the site. Over at
http://www.eze365.com/english/working_in_korea_application.htm
where people apply, there's a section called 'overtime rate' where teachers are supposed to enter the hourly rate they would want for overtime work. If it isn't entered a window pops up and says "Please enter overtime late!" or something of the sort. *^^*
So that part needs changing. Besides that I think I've gotten rid of all the Konglish. Let me know if you spot anything else on the site.

Just checking

2005-04-19T16:35:00.000+09:00

Just checking to make sure everything works.
This is Easy English Consulting.
http://www.eze365.com is our home page.
한국어도 잘 되네요
All right.