Verifying a Chinese Schools Hiring seriousness and Validity

[dabe]

Hello All,

I am new to this discussion list and am pursuing a teaching career in China. I've been offered a teaching position in Jiangsu Province by a company called Crogers International Co. Ltd. in Beijing. Their web site at www.wcrogers_international.com is down due to reconstruction per the contact. How can I investigate to determine their validity and what types of problems Teachers have had? What questions, beyond the obvious, should I ask ? Has anyone ever heard of them?
Thank you and have a good day.

[gfell]

I think you have the wrong domain. If a domain has been around for at least a week or so, then there would be some trace of it either in Google or Alexa.

I just did a quick search now on "www.wcrogers_international.com" in Google, but it brought up no results. Alexa also brought up no results at Alexa results for: wcrogers_international.com/ and there is no history cached of the site either. It would be safe to assume no such site has ever existed there.

Furthermore, domain names are not allowed to have an underscore in their name.

Somehow, their email address cherrycui0608@yahoo.com rings a bell with me. I would tread carefully. Ask to speak to a current and former teacher to get the real view of the school.

[gfell]

Upon further investigation, you have the wrong domain name. It should be a hyphen not an underscore.

wcrogers-international.com.

Anyhow, the school has no IP assigned to their domain name, hence why it doesn't show. Seems they don't know what they are doing. See Wcrogers-international.com - Wc Rogers International.

Go to Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see how their website once looked.

[englishaffairs]

hmm, I have never heard of them either and looking at their old website it seems you may want to move on and look elsewhere. My guess is maybe someone from the company is just using the name for recruiting purposes.

[Hypiereon]

It could be a "re-engineered" website - a knock off of the original to gain credibility. The "cherry" name rings with me as well in a bad way, though I cannot place it.

If you cannot get information you want then ask yourself if you would go to work for a company in your city under the same conditions. If your answer is "no" then I'd say it's safe to assume you wouldn't want to be working for this place either.

Your neck. My advice - keep it tucked.

[Hypiereon]

OK - here's the deal.

I checked the websites gfell mentioned and the name YAKUP International popped up. That REALLY rang a bell, so I went to the blacklisted schools list posted on this website. Under the blacklist forums I once posted a link to this thread a long time ago ( http://www.bearcanada.com/esl/bl01.html ).

Guess that should pretty much tell you everything just seeing it under the blacklisted names. You'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the "good" part, but suffice it to say - stay away.

[gfell]

Hey good find there Hypiereon! Our bells ringing were correct after all then.

[kdavid]

For future employees of could-be dodgy schools, remember this: if you enter China on a tourist / 90-day visa, you should have some slack time on your passport. Don't hand it over right away. Wait a week or two to make sure your school is living up to all of its agreements in the contract. Once you feel comfortable, you can give them your passport for visa processing.