Locally Hired Expat Pitfalls

Foreign employees are in high de- mand in China and the amount of jobs available for expats greatly exceed the supply of people to take them. This puts a lot of pressure upon hiring managers to find creative methods to bring in foreign talent that sometimes results in unethical hiring practices. I’ve spent a number of years here and with that work experience have progressively been able to open more and more doors but alas those doors often lead to nowhere because these creative practices create the illusion of enticing opportunities when you are actually unwittingly accepting a position you would never accept otherwise.

This aggressive hiring for expat jobs is most rampant in schools as I’d guess less than 1% of all ESL teachers in China would be qualified to do the same job within their own country. Some eventually do go back home and teach ESL, but only after a lengthy process of study and certification. Most “teachers” are nothing more than working tourists looking for a way to subsidize their travels. The demand for these utterly useless expats at the school is so high because one of the easiest ways a school can increase its fees is to bring in foreign teachers. My students paid their schools a compulsory 50 RMB monthly fee for my presence and with my 2,500 students the school has an additional 100k+ RMB in revenue each month per foreign teacher. Thus qualifications are of little importance as having a competent foreigner teaching English brings the same financial bottom line as an incompetent one and this line of thought is representative of China’s hiring of foreigners in general.

The bait and switch is a very common tactic to bring in these massive cash cow expat teachers and it’s common for a hiring company to post a job in a nice location and offer nice benefits and then reality sets in only after the candidate has accepted the non-existent job and flown halfway across the country. When I first came to China, I found a school that was located near Changbaishan Mountain, where I was told I could go hiking in virgin forests and would stay in an amazing apartment that had a balcony overlooking a scenic river. As a mountaineer, I jumped upon this exciting opportunity.

However, I ultimately wound up at a“school” in a small industrial town several hours away from Changbaishan Mountain and without a single tree within a ten mile radius. I was poorly treated and shared an unheated, cockroach infested apartment without even a bed in the middle of the winter. My roommate even slept in the bathroom because of the warmth provided by the overhead heat lamps. The “school”was in fact a foreign teacher placement company and they hadn’t yet found a place for me to work so the first few days they just dragged me around the local schools to show off the new white person and start a bidding war. The staff was so unaccustomed to having a teacher who spoke excellent Chinese and thus disclosed key financial details right in front of me, which is where that 50 RMB per student information comes. I was upset that the “school” had so utterly misrepresented themselves to me and told them I would not accept this and left.

My strong response in leaving surprised them as they didn’t think they did anything wrong. It also surprised my foreign colleagues who couldn’t believe I would forfeit my airfare bonus and not just work out the contract. Truth be told, if I weren’t adept at the language and previously lived in China myself, I don’t think I would have had the courage to just leave and would have stayed like the dozens of other foreigners under their abuse. The“school” even had the gall to justify their actions by explaining that if they told me the truth about everything I wouldn’t have accepted the position and thus they did the right thing by deceiving me to entice me to come. I decided then and there I was done“teaching” English but sadly the bait and switch has been a common occurrence in every other job I’ve ever taken since. It only becomes more sophisticated outside the realm of teaching and can have devastating career implications rather than simply “my apartment isn’t as nice as the one you told me I’d have.”