I applied with Angelinas and right off the bat they tried to do a "bait and swtich" with me. I walked away right away. They are full of s***t!

Let's get to the root cause of foreign teachers sending scans of passport pages and academic qualifications not only to recruiters, but also to direct employers via the net, shall we?

The root cause is the Chinese bureaus of education, and the PSB themselves, not to mention school FAO's themselves, many of whom want to see the photos of job applicants on passports to ensure said applicants are white! You see, applications from Chinese employers for approved letters of invitation must be supported by the aforementioned scans. Crazy! This leaves the way open for criminals to misuse the scans to perpetrate ID frauds. The Chinese authorities can make it much more difficult for fraudsters to do their dirty business by instructing employers not to insist on scanned copies of passport pages and academic qualifications accompanying job applications.

But the bureaus of education who issue FEC's and the PSB who have more than one department involved in the approval of letters of invitation need to change their procedures too. The necessary documentation for hiring FT's can be approved against personal information supplied by jobseekers on resumes. Then, the originals of passports and degrees can be checked against said resumes in China. If there are no discrepancies, then an RP can be issued. That's kinda like what doctors advice re AIDS, ie safe sex will prevent the spread of AIDS. Please do not tar all recruiters with the same brush at this time. They're just following the stupid system here. Eliminate the root cause,scanning, and fraudsters will have no way to misuse scans.

Another thing that has made me angry is a direct employer passing on my job application with its scanned documents to another school that I hadn't applied to! Said school then contacted me offering me a job! Schools are careless with scans too.

If scans are not asked for, we needn't have so many security agents running around after fraudsters. The latter will not have the chance to forge without the aforementioned scans!

Just out of curiosity - are you by any chance talking about Zhengzhou and NCWU? :) All the info points to this school (Aussie makes me almost 100% sure).

Ha, yes I remember her or whoever was replying on the Angelina's Cafe email that she was very rude while at the same time referring to herself and her company as the BUSIEST or BIGGEST recruiting company!!! Whooo hooo! Even then, I set her straight and was kind but she pretty much never got back to me besides we were unsuccessful, maybe you should pick other schools. That's it. I sent another list. NEVER heard from her again.

Angelina's arranged a telephone interview for a job for me with a woman in Australia. After lots of assurances the job and conditions were decent, I left the city I had lived and worked in for years (Nanjing) and headed to the capital of another province to the west.

The job and working conditions were nightmarish. It turns out the woman whom I interviewed with on the phone was the daughter of the lunatic running the program in China. My teaching hours were ridiculous - a split: 8:00-11:00AM and 4:00-9:00PM. My apartment (although nice, my best in China) was a VERY LONG bus ride away in the city, while the school was outside the city. Therefore, I had to stay at the school (in an office with no stable internet connection or basic professional amenities) during the long break between classes.

The school bathrooms were the filthiest I had ever encountered in China (and there's some tough competition there) with no privacy whatsoever -- just a long trough for both functions. The stench was unbelievable (but of course the head master had excellent, personal facilities on the other corner of the tiny, ugly, treeless campus).

I learned that just days before I had arrived, the students in my program had thrown rocks at the college owner's office protesting their terrible dorm and classroom conditions.

When I complained bitterly to Angelina's they refused to remove me and place me in another school; not wanting to anger their slimy "client" in Australia (whom they knew all along was in cahoots with her mother).

I quit after two and half months -- and 40 DAYS of diarrhea, no kidding. I recovered once I was out of the hellhole, and never, ever dealt with Angelina's again.

THE WORST!

My experience with this company was terrible. They are not reliable. I got an email from them promising that they would commence the process of placing me but did not hear from them again. If you are a serious teacher, do not waste your time with this bunch.

Although I have no direct experience with said recruiter, you would be well advised to go back through the archives here and read what I and others have written about working with a recruiter and China. Granted there are a few honest ones out there, and Angelina's may be one of them, but generally they should be avoided. Remember, they are motivated purely by profit. And believe me they are raking in the cash and usually could care less about you or the students you are so honorably willing to teach.
If you do determine that they can be trusted, heed my advice and others such as Rheno (hey Rheno - how's it goin'?) and be prepared to run like the wind. Have some cash on hand and remember a contract will not protect you. Contracts here are for their benifit, not yours.
Good luck! China can be great, if you learn to avoid the scam artists.