The Job Market in Taiwan
The job market for foreign English teachers in Taiwan is organized around different types of employers. There are four basic types; children's companies, adult's companies, agents, and corporate providers.
By far, the largest and most lucrative sector of this market is the teaching of kids. The younger the better. If you can teach 3-year-olds, then it's gold. Children's schools are everywhere. There's a new one opening on every corner. Just check Web sites like tealit.com or teachermania.com to see the vast number of jobs available. It's an employee's market out there right now. While the best money is with the little ones, the biggest market is with after school classes for school-aged children. No one likes to think that it's just the money, especially when it comes to the education of children, but the difference in pay between children's classes and adult's can make a big difference in your life. The market provides stable, regular, daytime hours that pay better. All this makes it a lot easier for anyone to imagine that they have always been thinking about teaching kids.
Many of the older, established companies, such as Gram and Kojen (ELSI) started out in the adult's market. This is where you bring together adults from a wide range of background, abilities, and needs and teach them. The reality is that most teachers want to be teaching adults. The problem is that there are fewer jobs and they pay less. Often, the quality of the employers and the training they can give you is not very good. Jobs at the major adult's teaching companies have low status among foreign teachers and are not very satisfying in the long haul.
Agents operate as middlemen, connecting local adults, parents, or anyone else looking for instruction and foreigners looking for work. They take a cut from what they charge the locals as a finder's fee. If you end up staying at a hostel, you will find out quickly who the major agents are. There are a lot of minor players in this market who come and go. My understanding is that recently, a lot of new names and faces are trying to break in. Agents are a good, quick source of work. The money isn't that great, but then the work is really easy. Often, customers are just looking for someone to talk to. Some of the agents have a lot of work, so they can be flexible in filling holes in your schedule, as well, but since almost all agents can not provide work permits, I wouldn't recommend even the best agent for a long time, but they can serve a useful purpose.
Corporate teaching is where I woked for most of my time in Taiwan. This market is dominated by a few major names who have not changed in many, many years. Even the new names in this sector are affiliated with the older players. It's much higher status teaching that teaching kid's or adult's classes. If you are a talented corporate teacher, your students may include the CEOs and owners of well-known companies. It's a great chance to meet some very interesting people. The major problem is that this is work. One month you pull in $nt90,000, the next it might be $nt25,000. Cancellations are a big problem, as well. Your schedule goes up and down like a yo-yo and you have very little control over this. I enjoyed teaching corporate classes very much, but it was really hard.
There are other kinds of employers available. Some of my friends teach test preparation for students going overseas, there are quasi-institutional groups like CETRA that have a campus and hire full-time teachers, and increasingly there are high schools, colleges, and universities hiring foreign teachers. Many of these are very competitive jobs, offering great compensation packages that include paid holidays and high salaries. They are very hard to get for inexperienced people without special training in TESOL/TEFL or education.
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