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ecstatic crooked nuts
Today, under a category section of the famous American forum Reddit , Xiaotan noticed: Someone made a new post with the title "I got this job!"
The poster was obviously extremely excited: "After a long interview process (one-sided, three-sided, including two mock exams), I received the assessment email 40 minutes ago! Although the background check and document submission have not yet been confirmed, I have I was hired! I'm finally free now! If anyone can give me some experience advice, I will be very grateful!" Then the following threads expressed their congratulations and enthusiastic suggestions.
There are a lot of celebratory posts with similar themes in this category. What is the job that makes these Americans so happy?
No one would have imagined that this is a Chinese online education company called VIPKID. The posters have just been admitted as teachers of VIPKID, although they are only contract workers.
So, what kind of company is VIPKID?
VIPKID Promotional Ads
It is very well-known among because it focuses on online paid English education for children (4 to 12 years old), connecting teachers and students through one-on-one remote video. Currently, it has more than 30,000 foreign teachers in North America!
A lot of Americans think it's great to be a foreign teacher at VIPKID, and they're trying to get the job. If you don't believe me, let's take a look at the video on YouTube. These videos with more than 100,000 views are all about how to pass VIPKID's recruitment interview, as well as VIPKID's work conditions and resources.
Under the first video "8 Tips to Teach You to Pass VIPKID's Simulation Course", the messages are all expressing gratitude and asking for more guidance and suggestions.
There are also more than 50 Facebook discussion groups on Facebook , and the following groups have more than 10,000 group members. The spy tried to join two of the large groups, but they had to submit screenshots of the VIPKID interview to prove that they could join, so they had to give up. But we can also speculate from this: VIPKID foreign teachers in North America are indeed a huge group.
In the Reddit forum we mentioned at the beginning, there are hundreds or thousands of VIPKID related discussion posts! Most of the content is "technical discussion", mainly including: How to get this job through an interview? How can I get more parents to subscribe to my class? How to make the course more interesting and engaging, etc.
On Glassdoor, the most famous job review site, VIPKID has a score of 4.1, which is a high score among Chinese companies going overseas (higher than Alibaba's 4.0). Among them, the praise focused on "free time and place to work", "great students", and "good income" .
Seeing this, everyone must have a lot of questions: Don't local companies in the United States have these working conditions? Do they have to cross cultural and language barriers to apply for a job teaching Chinese children across the ocean?
Please enter the field visit with the scout.
Mabry has worked at VIPKID for more than two years and is a "star" teacher in the eyes of users . She said: "At first, it was mainly because I needed other part-time jobs to supplement my income. But now, I really think it's the best job I've ever had! Sometimes I wash my face and sit in front of the computer in the morning and it's easy to get started. Work; I've taken lessons in bars and trains, where and when I'm free."
VIPKID job advertisement: part-time teaching, happy all day!
VIPKID is known for its strictness in the North American applicant group. It requires candidates to have at least one year of educational counseling experience and at least two rounds of interview process, including mock teaching. However, after being hired, teachers can arrange their own teaching time and choose whether to accept the parent's booking. Moreover, teachers can earn 7 to 9 dollars for a 25-minute lecture, plus bonuses, the hourly salary can be as high as 22 dollars (about 140 yuan), and the monthly income easily exceeds 2,000 dollars based on working 4 hours a day and 23 days a month . This is indeed a high salary for a contract job with the freedom to work from home.
A mother-to-be is taking lessons at home with a relaxed attitude
Since 2018, well-known American supermarket chains such as Walmart and CVS have been the most popular places to attract part-time employees. The two companies just announced that they will raise their base wage to $11 an hour. However, working in these places often requires long-distance driving; and the work is very hard, and there is no self-improvement, which is far inferior to VIPKID's work.
However, the common benefit of these jobs is that individuals can organize their own time, not necessarily eight hours a day.
Why is this important?
You may have noticed that most of VIPKID's job applicants are young and middle-aged women. In fact, Wal-Mart , CVS and other places are the same. Often because of family and children, many American women are unable to hold full-time jobs.
Mabry tells the story of one of her friends, Emma. Emma lives in a small Mississippi town with few job opportunities. With four children in her family, she was forced to become a housewife. But Emma's husband's income of $2,500 a month makes the family financially unable to make ends meet.
Later, Emma was recommended by a friend and became a remote teacher of VIPKID. She gets up at 4 a.m. every day to teach students on the other side of the ocean. Halfway through, she has to look at VIPKID's new lesson plan and other teachers' feedback to the students. Start the day at work as a housewife.
Emma said that the timing of this job was perfect for her, and of course it was very hard, and she could only sleep less than 5 hours a day. However, her monthly income is basically the same as her husband's, and the tense family economic situation has been greatly relieved.
Mom is a superhero who can do multiple jobs and never get tired
Emma's case is far from unique, especially in the middle states and rural areas of the United States, where job opportunities are scarce.
VIPKID recently partnered with the Tennessee Rural Education Coalition in Tennessee to help more rural teachers in the state find part-time jobs. Teachers in local public schools often face two major problems: 1) low wages, not enough to support their families; 2) half of the state's schools are located in rural communities, and during the long summer and winter vacations, teachers have a lot of free time, but can't find them locally. to a suitable part-time job. The most common part-time job is as a driver taking children to and from school, but even those opportunities are few and far between.
So the organization is very active in its cooperation with VIPKID, and is trying to push teachers to work in this company.
Coincidentally, VIPKID CEO Mi Wenjuan mentioned in an interview with Fast Company that they are communicating and cooperating with Utah Senator Howard Stephenson. Due to the lack of job opportunities in many small towns in the state, more and more people are moving to Salt Lake City (the capital of Utah) to find work and settle down, resulting in a "hollowing out" of large areas of rural areas and an increasingly sluggish economy . And VIPKID offers the opportunity to work from home, perhaps encouraging them to stay in small towns and spend locally, helping to “decentralize” big U.S. cities.
This is proven by examples.
Jenny, a rural teacher who just got a job at VIPKID, said at a teacher gathering: "It's almost impossible to find a part-time job with a salary of $20 an hour in Utah, except for VIPKID. But for many of our teachers, it is very necessary to earn extra money to support the family. Yes. Thankfully I got the job so I can stay here and teach my dear students to read."
It seems that the era of globalization of the Internet has brought a little bit of good news to the residents of small and medium-sized cities and towns in the United States where job opportunities are scarce. However, the Internet connects all people, but it does not help to eliminate language and cultural differences between each other. This disparity magnifies conflicts that naturally exist between employers and employees.
Bloomberg Businessweek reported last year that Misty Heitman, a 42-year-old VIPKID teacher, canceled several online classes after her daughter died of illness. As a result, she got an email saying she had been fired for not being able to attend class on time.
The battered Heitman caused an uproar when he posted the incident online. Many people complained for her: "You fired a mother because she lost her daughter? Then if I have a car accident tomorrow, you will not want me right away?" Then they discussed whether the mechanism for upgrading to VIPKID is reasonable, such as the strict course cancellation practice, It is more applicable to employees (employees), but VIPKID only treats teachers as contractors, which is extremely unfair. But VIPKID, on the one hand, insists it abides by U.S. labor laws and has been looking for ways to better serve teachers and students.
Note: The legal treatment of employees and contract workers is not the same. Employees are protected from minimum wage and overtime pay, while contract workers do not. In addition, the latter does not enjoy various benefits of the company, such as medical insurance.
David Weil, a former U.S. Department of Labor official, said this is becoming an increasingly common debate, with Uber before VIPKID. In an era where you can tap into a computer or phone screen to get work assignments, companies want to reduce costs and burdens by referring to the people who work for them as "contract workers."
For Heitman alone, though, it ended well — VIPKID apologized, sent her a soothing gift, and resumed her job. This addresses Heitman's main claim: "They did the right thing in the end."
While the online debate slammed VIPKID, everyone, including herself, was relieved that Heitman was back at the company.
In addition, Xiaotan also noticed: VIPKID's black teachers generally get very few parental subscriptions, even if they have rich work experience. This has also raised some doubts: "Do Chinese parents discriminate against black people?" "They prefer to choose beautiful teachers, right?" However, because no specific incident occurred, such discussions have not been too much. However, as more and more Chinese companies "go overseas", when they cooperate with overseas local employees, it is foreseeable that initial friction is inevitable.
But in general, I believe that everyone sincerely hopes that more and more Chinese companies can go abroad, so that people in other countries, especially residents of developed countries in Europe and the United States, see that we are not only able to produce "Made in China" goods. To grab their jobs, we also have innovative business models and create jobs for them.
In addition, like many teachers in VIPKID, in order to do this job well, they work hard to learn Chinese to get likes and subscriptions from their parents, and even try to travel to China to understand Chinese culture. Xiao Tan believes: This is a very good way to show economic strength and cultural charm!
The final question is: if you find a foreign teacher for your child, will you ask the teacher to have a beautiful smile and a sweet posture?
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