The Good:

Very little. What I will say about them is they provided me with a ton of interviews, so if you’re just looking for ANY job in Korea and don’t care about whether or not the school is good, honest, or even an English school at all (one of the interviews they gave me was for an English instructor at a Tae Kwon Do school), then your experience might be better than mine.

The Bad: Oh, oh so many things.

First, they were completely unwilling to work around my schedule. The woman I talked to on the phone seemed offended when I mentioned that I was currently working 9-5 in Canada and thus unable to accept any interviews during that time. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the recruiters work too, but I did not appreciate getting called at 11PM 3 or 4 times a week (really), and having most of my interviews scheduled at 6 in the morning.

Secondly, there was almost no information online about any of the schools I interviewed with, which was alarming. One school offered me a job and the recruiter called me (at 11:30PM, of course) to ask me if I had any questions. I asked her if the school had a website or any information online about it, and she told me that most Korean schools do not have websites (a lie, in my experience) and all she could tell me is she had placed “many teachers” here and they were all “very happy”. When I asked her for one of their e-mail addresses she said she couldn’t give them out to me but she’d ask them if they would e-mail me about their experiences working for this school. Predictably, I never heard anything back. Really unsettling.

The Ugly:

Against my better judgement, I accepted an offer from them for a school that looked somewhat legitimate. I was going to be away on business so I informed my recruiter that I would not be able to travel to the Consulate to get my documents verified and notarized for 2 weeks, and if the school wanted to go with another applicant I understood. She said the school was willing to wait so I proceeded to go away for a couple of weeks.

When I got back, I asked my recruiter what documents to take to the embassy. She told me, very specifically, NOT to bring my transcripts as they were to be in unopened, stamped envelopes when they arrived in Korea. However, when I got off my bus in Ottawa and got to the Korean embassy, the secretary informed me that I in fact did need my transcripts and they’d be unable to verify my other documents without them. When I got home I sent an e-mail detailing the situation to People Recruit — a very polite e-mail, I might add, in which I mentioned the circumstances and, despite their error, that I looked forward to working with them on finding other interviews.

I got a reply back from the so-called boss of the woman with whom I’d conducted all of my correspondence telling me, in no uncertain terms, that it was not only my fault that I couldn’t get my documents verified, but also that I was a horrible client for making their school wait for such a long period only to decline the offer. She may or may not have also mentioned that NO school and NO recruiters would ever work with me again, as if she has some kind of connection to the entire Korean education market (not that I’d want to work at any that she knew anyway).

Final Verdict: Unless you want to work at a shitty Karate school in the mountains, avoid these recruiters.