Thanks snugglers, for sharing your illuminating experiences with the ethical folks at ACE. Welcome to the wonderful world of ESL recruiters -- where ANYTHING will be said in order to collect a fee and move on to the next potential sucker. I'm glad a bit of intelligence and common sense on your part kicked in quickly (they never count on that -- always assume expats are completely gullible no matter how laughable their statements are).
It seems harder to circumvent recruiters in Korea. It's much easier to bypass recruiters in China (one tiny reason I much prefer China to Korea).
Anyway, thanks again, and happy trails...
I'll add ACE to the upcoming third edition of Korea "Hall of Shame" which will now have a section dedicated to recruiters.
Theo
Thought it would be worth relaying to other job seekers this information.
ACE Korea Consulting set me up with an interview. Initially they claimed the school was a major branch with upwards of 25 current native English teachers. Upon interview it turned out I would be replacing 1 of 2. Enrollment figures and Korean staff numbers were also about 10% of what I was told. That and it was private owned and not a corporate owned branch.
When i called them out on this their excuse was that they were confused, knew this yesterday and tried to email me but it was too late. Too late to send an email a day in advance?
Upon saying I would consider an offer if the school made one, basically an attempt to not poop on them and hope they redeemed themselves, but would rather be in a bigger school with more coworkers I was quite abruptly told that those schools handle their own recruitment and competition is high and basically not worth trying, basically an effort to discourage me from straying from their little flock and was also actually told that the job I had interviewed for is the ONLY available teaching job in Seoul right now. ROFLMAO
Basically, I get the feeling that this company is concerned with placing people and collecting their fees as quickly as possible and will tell you absolutely anything, and in the course seriously disrespect your intelligence. After just one interview, I wouldn't trust a damn thing they say.
I seriously hope that telling someone that you were so lucky to interview for the ONLY job in the second largest mega city in the world has never worked.
Happy hunting all!