Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Korean Language Help Program 31 to 40

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Korean Language Help Program 21 to 30

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Korean Language Help Program 11 to 20

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Korean Language Help Program 1 to 10

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Korean Trends: How to find the best job in Korea.

What is the most popular site for Koreans to use to find English teachers?

Do Koreans favor Male or Female?

What is the best age to teach?

What country is best to be from?

Do Koreans care about your education? Or is it better to be young and beautiful?

The Results of this study can be found here



Korea General Teaching Help

Korean Living and Health

Click the following to find the article
More coming soon.

Korean Language Help

Click the links to find the Let's Learn Korean Videos
Episode 1 to 10
Episode 11 to 20
Episode 21 to 30
The two boxes below are really cool gadgets from Google. The Korea English dictionary works great (just make sure you have Korean fonts loaded on you computer) and the word a day is a perfect tool when learning Korean. Just press the play button and it says the word!
Play Recording:



Learn Korean Now!

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Public Elementary School Help

Study Three: The Best Korean Website

We have submitted teacher profiles to six websites: http://www.elscafe.com/ http://www.marksesl.com/ http://www.hiteacher.com/ http://www.koreabridge.com/ http://www.englishspectrum.com/ http://www.teachkorea.com/. Websites that are hosted from Korean Recruiters such as Work n Play and English Kong have been omitted. It was determined the study would be biased towards the recruiter hosting these sites. The profiles of all the teachers used for this particular study are the same, the only difference are their email addresses. By using this method, the email which receives the most responses can be judged to the most popular website for Koreans seeking new teachers. We will also compare the number of resumes and job advertisements that have been posted on each of these websites. The goal being able to determine which website(s) is the most popular, not only for teachers, but also schools and recruiters.
First impressions

ESLCAFE is very easy to navigate for applicants. One simply provides an email address, name, advertisement title and profile description. For several years, http://www.eslcafe.com/ has been the best site for job searching. There is no registration required and it takes under a minute to upload your resume and other info into the system. It may take a few hours to be approved but once it’s there it stays. Unfortunately, there is no picture upload space, making it difficult for the employer to see who you are. Another downside is the inability to update or ‘top your resume,’ meaning once it is posted you can not delete or change it and as time goes on, your resume is eventually pushed to the bottom of the pile. MARKSESL is very similar to ESLCAFE except it lacks the latter’s popularity. As well, it generally requires more time on MARKSESL to have your resume approved; however, it does have an update feature, where you create a password to save changes at a later date. HITEACHER, another popular site, takes a little longer to register, but once your ad is uploaded you can edit your entire profile with your user name and password. There is also no approval waiting period. Once you post your resume it is seen immediately. And HITEACHER allows you to upload a portrait. It even records how many hits your ad has received at the bottom of the screen. You can hide your resume from people (i.e. your current school or an old recruiter) and by saving changes to your profile you automatically place it at the top of the pile. I believe this site to be very user friendly and it allows Korean employers the opportunity to gain a better sense of potential teachers. ENGLISHSPECTRUM is very similar to HITEACHER. However, it wants a scanned copy of your degree, leaving you vulnerable to identity fraud. Still, it is a very simple-to-use website. TEACHKOREA, like the previous two websites, require you to create a profile. They send you a confirmation email after you have submitted your ad to activate your account. This would add some extra minutes to the process. In this site you upload your full resume instead of cutting and pasting. This shortens the process by eliminating the need to deal with formatting problems encountered with cutting and pasting or by simply re-typing the information in a provided space. KOREABRIDGE is a mainly Pusan-oriented site, though occasionally you may access jobs from the rest of Korea . It is more of a forum and not so much a job board. You need to log in and then you can select the city you desire. There is also a place for your photo.

Click on images to enlarge









Resume and Job Ads
Looking at the facts. Most foreign teachers post on Dave's ESLCAFE. Therefore it is fair to say Recruiters and Schools will have the best luck finding a teacher through this site. However, it is a pay site; to view the resumes you must pay $100. It should be noted English Spectrum is not far behind in the volume of resumes posted.
On the other hand, schools and recruiters place more ads on English Spectrum than teachers. Korea Bridge is also a popular site. It is recommended for a teacher to reply to an ad on Korea Bridge or English Spectrum rather than post their resume on these sites. In regards to recruiter and private school ads, I attempted to examine the percentage representing each. However, upon examining each ad, I realized many of the sites posted multiple ads everyday, especially the recruiters. It is impossible to come up with an adequate number representing each. An estimation of “ESL Café” had a percentage of over 70% recruiter ads, “MARKS ESL” about 80%, “Korea Bridge” about 70%, English Spectrum and “Hi Teacher” about 60%. But it was difficult to make an adequate distinction between recruiters, individual schools and school chains. I believe replies to the personal portfolios show a better representation. It is simpler to make the distinction between multiple emails from the same school/recruiter and easier to see the difference between a recruiter company or not.
Charts: Exact numbers have been omitted to prevent any problems with
the websites. The first two charts compare the number of resumes posted by teachers on each of the major websites. The third and fourth charts compare the number of school ads in a week.
Chart One: The number of daily resumes found on each website over the period of one week.
Chart Two: The total resumes found on each website over the period of one week.
Chart Three: The number of daily job ads found on each website over the period of one week. Chart Four: The total job ads found on each website over the period of one week.

Replies to Portfolio

The replies to portfolios from Dave's “ESL Café” and “Hi Teacher” were almost equal. It should be kept in mind, there are more teacher ads posted on “ESL Café” (see chart one and two, number of resumes) and therefore more competition for each job.
If resumes are posted on “ESL Café” within just a few hours of each other, one will inevitably become buried at the bottom before any school views it. Two ads were posted on “ESL Cafe” one at 5pm and one at 2am the next day (labeled eslcafe.com and eslcafe.com 2). They were both approved the following day at the same time. However, the 2 am posting was on the top of the list. The results: 25% more replies. (see chart 6: Total Hit Comparison). Time of day is apparently a factor when submitting an ad to “ESL Café.”
Further, investigation shows that "ESL Café" has more recruiters than "Hi Teacher" and "Hi Teacher" has the largest percentage of individual school responses.
Charts: Exact numbers have been omitted to prevent any problems with the websites. The two charts compare the number of emails received from resume postings on each of the major websites. The bottom three charts break down each of the emails to franchise recruiter, recruiter or individual school/academy.
Recruiter: Someone searching for teachers for any school. They receive a commission for each teacher successfully recruited.
Franchise recruiter: Someone searching for teachers for a large school chain such as ECC or YBM. The teacher may work at any one of the school branches under that name. The recruiter receives commission for each teacher successfully recruited.
Individual school/academy: Someone searching for a teacher for just one school. This person may or may not receive a commission. In most situations, the recruiter in this case is often the academic director, owner or a teacher leaving their current position. Teachers who try to fill their own position before leaving are usually provided some compensation determined by the school.
Chart Five: The number of daily emails found for each website over the period of one week.
Chart Six: The total emails found for each website over the period of one week.
Chart Seven: The total emails found for each website over the period of one week that represents franchise recruiters.
Chart Eight: The total emails found for each website over the period of one week that represents recruiters.Chart Nine: The total emails found for each website over the period of one week that represents individual schools/academies.










Charts: Breaks down each website into recruiters, franchise recruiters and individual schools/academies. Look at the above note to understand the difference between each.
Conclusions:

Keep your resume at the top. Post first thing in the morning (afternoon in America) when nobody else is posting. ‘Top your resume’ on “English Spectrum” and “Hi Teacher.” Be patient. Use English Spectrum to primarily send emails from posted ads and use “Hi Teacher” and “ESL Café” for posting your resume. Be aware there are more teachers on “ESL Café.” You must be fast to get the job. Competition is High and teachers will do anything for the best job.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Study Two: Teacher's age

>>>Full Study<<<
Over a period of two weeks, seven identities were created and placed online in Korean job boards. Three of the identities were women, ages 22, 36 and 40 years. The other four identities were men, ages 22, 26, 36, and 65 years. With the exception of the 22 year old female, who was assigned a Bachelor of Science degree, all of the identities possessed Bachelor of Arts degrees. The aim of this particular study was to determine the most preferred age of each sex for foreign ESL teachers in Korea.

The following information was gathered: Click images to enlarge.

















In general, females are favored over males as ESL teachers, regardless of age. The total difference for Korean Employers preferring females to males was nine percent (See chart: Total Comparison between Male and Female Number of Email Replies). On individual school contacts, where no recruiter is used by the institution, females are preferred over males by 30 percent. This number is significant for two reasons. The constant demand for and turnover of foreign ESL teachers in Korea would suggest any gender bias would impede the success of private institutions by unbalancing the order of supply and demand. If individual schools possess a preference for female candidates this suggests the balance of supply and demand for ESL teachers is healthy enough at present for it to not warrant a change in employment practices by private institutions. But this may not be the case. Korea’s high salaries are a sign of its struggle to attract foreign teachers away from the emerging and increasingly competitive ESL markets in Taiwan and China. Over time this bias will possibly dissipate as the balance of supply and demand is increasingly strained by these other markets.

The advantage females enjoy in garnering more employment opportunities disappears with their age. Employers who prefer female teachers prefer young, inexperienced candidates. The youngest female profile is 22 years old (lady #3), and her response rate close to doubled most of the other profiles.
With exception of the 65 year old man, Korean employers prefer men who are slightly older, more mature teachers. However, schools tend to contact almost all age ranges for male candidates. Other Country Responses is the only category young male teachers are preferred over young female teachers. For example, China favors younger men than women. Further, it seems that the female teachers receive “special offers” not extended to their male counterparts. Examples of these offers include proposals for ‘friendship’ upon their arrival in Korea. This it seems is a common occurrence, where a man, not necessarily a school or recruiter, contacts the woman for friendship. The intentions of this proposal are unknown.

Lady 3, the 22 year old and youngest profile in the survey, received university and editing job offers. Her education profile included a BSc (Bachelor of Science). The offer for an editing position is thus confusing since a person with a BA in English Literature (one of whom was included in the survey, Man 1 and 2) would seem better fit for this position. As well, a person with a B of Ed (Bachelor of Education) seems better suited for the English Instructor as the university. This discrepancy between the candidates’ qualifications and the proper experience and education required of the positions offered, which this candidate both lacks, suggests Korean employers are less concerned with future job performance than with the appearance of having a young English speaker at their institution.
The next study will be a survey of websites. The sites will be judged on the volume of responses as well as the quality of those responses. (taking the result of the current study, I will choose a young female for which to test the market) She will have several email accounts, one for each website tests.

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