hi!
well, i was hoping we can start a fair-minded forum where we can share our work experiences with various companies.
the idea is to state the pros and cons of each to help us each find the best fit for the kind of employer we prefer.
please try and not use this for personal vendettas but instead to forewarn others of the things we thought worked well with our employers as well as the genuine problems we faced.
i will start with my former employer, i2, the institute of international education, which has several branches in kunming.
why would i recommend them?
they pay well and on time and it is a job where you can learn a lot if you want to.
also, many of my Chinese colleagues were absolutely lovely people who genuinely cared about us teachers, their work, and our students. working with them and learning a lot about high-end ESL services were the highlights of my time there, without a doubt.
why would i dissuade you from working for them?
first, the foreign affairs person there is very difficult to deal with and overall, unfortunately, lacks good communication skills and is (yikes!) not always honest.
second, they have a very stodgy, unresponsive, and difficult bureaucracy and most of the management in kunming is not very pleasant to deal with.
third, they require an awful lot of unnecessary busywork and can be quite petty about assigning work which actually interferes with the goal of providing high quality education.
all in all i would recommend avoiding them because, unfortunately, the problems with the management (especially the human resources or foreign affairs person) create a lot of unnecessary fighting, stress, and unhappiness. this is why the employee turnover at the company, at least in kunming, is extraordinarily high.
but, if you can tolerate all that and seek a higher pay than most companies offer in exchange for a job which is very demanding, then just maybe this company is for you!
Am I wrong if I suspect you are an English teacher?
There's already an app or website for reviewing companies - it's called glassdoor (dotcom).
It’s not easy to be too critical of employers when, as a foreigner, you find yourself eeking out a living in the bottom left hand-side corner of China.
thanks for sharing your thoughts!
while larger job portals are great for big companies or big cities, the idea of this post is for updated local use, to try and hold employers a tad accountable in the lovely and remote city of kunming which we all have the good fortune to have a chance to
stay in.
to be fair, non-Chinese hardly eek out a living in China relative to the local population. if the pay and lifestyle is not pleasing then, unlike the local population heck, most of us have the option of going elsewhere, right?
during my last job hunt i realised i had no way to know who to trust or not so it struck me to start this thread here on gokunming.
i do hope it keeps going!
a bit niaeve on many levels if your hoping to hold companies to account for bad management. but might be useful as a heads up for the few that really suck, and make newbies aware of the world.
'"try and not use this for personal vendettas",,
like you've done here: "first, the foreign affairs person there is very difficult to deal with and overall, unfortunately, lacks good communication skills and is (yikes!) not always honest."
hopefully this thread goes no further,,
it already contains potentially libellous comments
there is absolutly no libellous contect in the OP @Iteach, all they
stated was that the FA person is difficult and sometimes not honest. if OP had said that the FA person was/is/has commited a crime then that would be but there is nothing stated in the opening post it was just a user giving their experience for a company in kunming and there is nothing wrong with that. I think it is good thing provided that they do not make personal attacks or accuse a company/person of a crime
I think this thread was always doomed to fall flat on its face.
I also don't think it would make finding a job or who to trust any easier. Because someone who we don't know says ABC is a bad school on GoKunming you'd be naive to take their word for it as gospel.
If there was any school that for whatever reason couldn't keep its foreign staff then not only would it have been brought up on here, be struggling for business, but would also have the authorities asking about its revolving door of work permits etc. There are regulations that have come in that take away much of the risk in finding a reputable school, as well as rules helping schools to chose reputable teachers. If you're looking for a sure fire-risk free gig then personal recommendation from someone you know is the only way to go.
There is nothing libellous in having a negative opinion about something, nothing is being stated as fact, but the door is certainly ajar for this thread to become a slagging match.
