In the United States, we call this bait and switch. In their training and recruitment videos the students act as though they have prior knowledge of the program. In their practicum they have and adult pretend to be a developmentally delayed 5 year old. If you have been teaching young children for 40 years, you can't be fooled by some mediocre actress that knows nothing about English phonics or early childhood development.

They have Education, Recruitment, Marketing, and Troubleshooting (Firemen) Divisions. These divisions are unaware at times of what each other is doing or has done with you (Marketing is irrelevant in this connection). You've got to go to each department separately and individually by Skype and/or email to get matters straightened out sometimes. Also, once logged into your account on their application site, some of their upload document sections don't upload the types of documents that they say are permitted; but they do other types if you take the time to convert them until you find one which actually can be accepted. So be careful how you communicate with who and how much time you put into document preparation for them. To apply, you have to prepare an introductory video and bio, and supply a copy of your passport or drivers license for ID. Then their materials training is 7-8 hours of videos and 1-3 hours of skim reading PDFs. This is arduous and time consuming work. Surprisingly, their teaching tests (called Practicums 1 and possibly a follow-up 2) ask you to do things differently than the previous, preliminary video/reading training. And you have to implement these teaching approach alterations pervasively and on the fly. Such as to "speak ... very ... slowly." These points of interest are targets for you to change to on the fly, and they are not given in the video training. Essentially, I think, they are taking the team's issues and overemphasizing them to see if you are amiable and very flexible. They could be puts offs, too.

Asking for advice on this site is fruitless.

It's only inhabited by trolls, myself included.

As there is not much posted by way of review of VIPKid I thought I would share my experience with them.

They are an online teaching platform in China that brings the common core to Chinese students.

I was hired in September after completing a test interview. I have a master's degree in linguistics and a CELTA. Their training process involves two test lessons and a lot of preparation. During the second test lesson I experienced some technical difficulties and was informed I needed to have a tech test before proceeding.

The scheduling of the tech test was extremely laborious (re: lots of waiting and only two available slots )and took three weeks. After the test I was told by the specialist everything was fine on my side. A few hours later I was unceremoniously removed from their teaching roster and told that they had done everything they could but the technical difficulties are insurmountable.

Essentially they are a new young company that does not have its kinks worked out. Additionally, they are mass hiring right now so have no motivation to keep qualified teachers on the roster, or to work with them to troubleshoot difficulties.

In short: don't waste your time with this company. Maybe in a few years they will be worth the effort.