In the past, I've been a (probabably) outspoken proponent of avoiding recruiters and dealing directly with the schools, for many of the reason mentioned plus the fact that most recruiters in China are crookeder (sic) than a dog's hind leg.

However, now that a Chinese FAO partner and I are doing recruiting for a few universities, I find myself in the curious position of still recommending my earlier advice.

We try to do it a bit better than the con artists. We try hard to avoid schools that don't have solid reputations and we try to select teachers carefully so nobody is disappointed with the result. But recruiting sight unseen is difficult for both parties.

I doubt it's possible for a recruiter to 'take care of teachers' in any real sense. We (my partner and I) do understand between us both sides of the main issues, and we can translate, interpret, mediate for some kinds of things. But if you're 2,000 Kms. away, it isn't easy to do much more.

The help that is given is more from a sense of responsibility and good will than anything else, because there isn't enough money in it to justify a large investment in time.

You may be interested to know that in one recent contract to find 45 English teachers for a university, we went through names of more than 800 teachers and may still not have filled our quota. Nothing wrong with the uni, but by the time we weed out the unqualified or unsuitable, cross off those who want to be in another city, those who want maybe higher pay or different circumstances, we're left with maybe 50 or 60 and the uni rejects 20 of those.

That effort - just to find a relatively small number of teachers who might fit well and be happy in a given situtation - represents a huge up-front investment in our time. Then we're involved to some necessary extent in helping to reduce the anxiety of coming to China and landing in the right place. And by the time we receive our 2,000 RMB when the teacher finally arrives at the school, there's not much energy left for dispute mediation or anything else.

I think there are many recruiters in China who have become very rich, but from my experience it can be done only by bringing in a huge volume of inexperienced or unqualified teachers to work at the unlicensed schools and private training centres.

If I were a teacher looking for a position, I would probably try to deal directly with a school, mostly because I wouldn't know whom to trust. There are so many con artists out there looking for gold that it can really be a disheartening process.

Someone told me recently that the government is planning on a big crackdown on the unlicensed schools and, if that is true, the situation should improve measurably. If the illegal schools are out of business, the scam recruiters will be out as well and maybe the picture would be more clear for everyone. Maybe.