All of these Korean Phone English schools are similar. The pay comes out to about $8 an hour if you do the progress reports and write the daily comments. You can make around $400 a wk if you're lucky. The students will bombard you with the worst English you've ever heard. The men are really obnoxious and talk like neanderthals. They all seem harmless at first though.

They live in a society where it's OK to make racist and sexist remarks very casually. For example, even though they may have black English teachers on the other end of the phone and not realize it, they'll say they're afraid of black people and make a ton of other insulting remarks.

And in no time, you'll grow to hate your students -- I mean hate them. I'm not joking. They think Americans exist to entertain them. They're unbelievably stupid. Correcting their English and actually trying to help them is a waste of time. They drone on and on as if they're constipated. A great deal of the time, your students will be drunk.

Don't even think about getting on a plane and going to that country to teach.

This deception is not only unique to Korea.

Chinese are very good at the we can't pay you more gambit.

I have just turned down an offer with a middle school in China because they only wanted to pay 65 rmb per hour for extra classes. As that is less than the minimum wage in the UK, I don't feel a foreign teacher (with experience!) should accept that amount. A GW would on the grounds that china is a "developing country" and just to sucker up to their boss, but not me!

I have worked for Carrot English for almost two years. I am a highly ranked teacher and have made it in to the top ten at times.

RECRUITMENT: The recruitment postings all over the internet LIE BY OMISSION and the recruiter(your potential future manager) will lie by omission on the phone with you during their first call in response to your resume. The lie? That they pay $13 per hour. They pay $2.79 cents per 10 minutes. You will never have 8 hours a day of classes. I never make more than $1500 a month and that is before tax.

You are hired as a SUB CONTRACTOR. So what? This means that you're not an employee of Carrot English, you're a separate business entity, so you can be treated in any manner they see fit.

I didn't have to prove my qualifications to them and on top of that they lie in my profile on their Korean language website about my qualifications and experience.

No information about the company where it's going or what it's doing is readily available. Below is the company news letter for Sept. 2012:

"Dear ___ ____ teacher,

Hello this is Cecil & Kelly from THR. It is April already and cold winter days are gone and warm spring ray waits for us. It might be a great idea for you to go on a short trip to enjoy this warm spring days. If you have any good news to share with us please send them to us anytime. Thanks."

No joke.

TRAINING: The training only lasts for 3 hours. So? They have their own proprietary software program that is used to deliver classes. Along with third party purchased software. They also have a laundry list of policy, coding and protocol that must be followed. Your adherence to their policy, appropriate coding, and awareness of protocol affect how many new students you receive and thus your pay.

On innumerable occasions my manager's answer to my questions regarding the former areas of job function has been "I don't know." One of my manager's core functions is to train teachers and make sure they meet standards.

TEACHING:

- The majority of my classes are 10 minutes long>The students can have any increment of time they choose from 10 minutes and up which is fine I guess
- The students are polite friendly and eager to speak with you
- You make of your teaching what ever you want. You can go all out with lesson plans or be lazy and just chat about what ever with students
- You can live anywhere in the world where there is a sound internet connection and quiet
- Students can cancel a class anytime> If your first class starts at 5am your student can cancel it at 4:55am and you might not have a class after that for an hour because the scheduling staff don't care about you at all; only the customers
- There is little to no communication with other staff except for posting absences and class issues to the daily report board so you can not talk to the other teachers privately unless you manage to find them on facebook where they will likely have no idea who you are because you've never communicated before
- The text books are okay. They have a tonne of grammatical errors, inappropriate(by western standards - sexual, christian exclusive, name calling etc) content, but are very racially inclusive(which is good)
- They have a variety of learning material to choose from and you can create your own as I've mentioned previously
- YOU WILL HAVE KNOW IDEA WHAT THE OTHER TEACHERS EXPERIENCE IS LIKE
- I could go on

MANAGEMENT: Secretive, power tripping, passive aggressive, and functions as the company watch dog. They are trained to say that they are on your side and to speak to you in a sweet voice. There only interest is covering their own ass and how you fit in to that.

My manager is very knowledgeable about TEFL, but not about managing or the company she works for. She is secretive in order to create an air of authority and exclusivity, but is barely making ends meet(she broke down and admitted this).

SCHEDULING: They have hundreds of phone teachers to schedule and would rather hire more to fill their scheduling needs than working on filling in the gaps on your schedule so that you can get full time hours. Only the top ten get the $0.50 raise and even then they won't get it if they've missed one call(NC code - this happened to the second ranked teacher this year I found out after some extensive complaining on my part).

The most you'll ever make is $17p/h and it will take 4 years to reach that level according to the contract.

PUNISHMENT: Make a mistake and you are punished with a reduction in salary of various amounts depending on your 'error'. Mistakes include cancellations for family emergencies or sickness. When making no more than $1500 on a good month this is real tyranny on their part in my opinion.

PAY: It's never late, in fact it's often early, but you'll be working FT for PT wages. It doesn't pay $13p/h. It pays $2.79 per ten minutes. This means that you can be sitting at your desk for 5 hours and only make $27 because of short gaps in your schedule. Your income is totally unstable because you DO NOT GET PAID BY THE HOUR. IT'S BY THE CLASS WHICH TOTALLY DEPENDS ON WEATHER THE SCHEDULERS LIKE YOU OR NOT.

CONCLUSION: No matter how desperate you are, you can do better. Don't work for Carrot English unless you don't have to pay rent or bills of any kind. Flipping burgers pays more in my country. I'm not perfect, but I deserved better
and I realized it was up to me to change and not Carrot English because they have no reason to.

In a year of working for them the pay has been late or wrong more than one fourth of the time. The pay is very low and there are huge gaps in the shifts so rather then being paid by the hour, think paid by the minute. Some hours, you will only teach for ten minutes. You are expected to evaluate each student every two weeks. You will not be paid for the time it takes to write the evaluations which are full of pull down menus and take about ten minutes each to complete. You also will not receive the full pay if the student does not answer the phone when you call. Requirements are tedious and remuneration is low. Teachers are treated like throw always...

Forget chasing the carrot at the end of the stick. They don't pay their bills. You teach and then........Still in suspense?

I believe they are Legit. I have recently begun working for them. While they have not yet asked for my banking information, i believe they will early on. I have a friend who has worked for them for three months and they pay via wire transfers and therefore require the info for this. I understand your trepidation. If i didn't already know someone working for them, i would have had second thoughts myself.

If you are still nervous, contact me, and we can exchange specifics on the people we are working with.

Michael

I regret that I didn't see this earlier--Silverboy is clearly misguided. Carrot Korea is one of the most reputable and FASTEST growing phone English companies in Korea today. I've been working for them since April and I LOVE it! I was hired through one of their North American managers--my manager is a Canadian-American who lives IN the US and acts as a liaison between Anglophone recruits and tutors and the Korean administrative staff. All of my interactions with the Korean staff have been respectful and professional. The job is fun, easy and (as previously mentioned) your pay is sent by either PayPal or International Bank Draft. Best of all, my students range in age from 11 years old up into their forties and my adult students are primarily from corporate accounts established with the Ministry of Foreign Trade, LG, Samsung, Hyundai and so on--excellent organizations and FASCINATING students. I never thought I could learn so much about another culture without actually going there.

I highly recommend working for Carrot!

Hello,
Does anyone have info on Carrot Korea? I just want to make sure it's a bonafide, reputable company, to apply for an online teaching position. It's seems credible, but I've never applied for an online teaching position, where they ask upfront for your banking info. Thanks!

Leona

[Edited by Administrator (admin) Sat, 14 May 2011, 02:52 AM]