My boyfriend and I applied to teach in South Korea with Footprints Recruiting. Their website boasted wonderful reviews, excellent service, a world famous reputation and a company represented as an experienced and dedicated team of well travelled professionals.
Unfortunately the service we received was abysmal. When we first signed up and applied to Footprints they were pretty quick to respond and Skype interviews were arranged the same week. The interviews went great and the friendly guy on the phone gushed about the "personal co-ordinator" who would guide us through our EPIC application and be there to answer all of our questions. We were thrilled, especially as the EPIC programme is pretty complicated with regards to the quantity of information and documents that you are required to send over to Korea.
That Skype call was the last personalised communication we received from Footprints. In the two months that followed we applied for positions in the EPIC programme and awaited a response from Footprints. Nothing.
After a couple of weeks we sent a follow up email requesting confirmation that Footprints had received our EPIC applications. Nothing.
We posted questions on the forums. No answer. [update: we received a reply 5 months later, when we were already in Korea teaching!]
We did receive numerous generic, unrelated emails that began "Hi everyone!"
When we finally received a relevant response from Footprints (two months later), we were told that we could not apply for EPIC as a couple, and that we would have to apply separately and risk being placed at opposite ends of the country. This was a lie, the EPIC programme does accept people applying as a couple, in fact it is encouraged. I believe that Footprints had neglected our application until it was too late to apply.
Footprints suggested an alternative public schools programme in Korea, but could not guarantee that we would be able to apply as a couple.
By that stage we'd lost all faith. 4 months had passed since we first contacted Footprints and were weren't a single step closer to going to Korea. We'd wasted so much time applying to Footprints, applying for EPIC, sending emails, posting on forums, gathering our documents... it was very discouraging. We decided to look for a job through a private recruiter, and started our search on Craigslist.
We sent one email, to one recruiter; a Korean man named Doyle Kim. Within minutes he'd replied with a job opening for two people. He arranged phone interviews for the next day and once we'd done them he had our contracts sent over just 4 days later. By then end of the week we'd accepted the jobs and were ready to send our documents over to Korea.
Footprints Recruiting are unorganised, unhelpful, unprofessional, a massive disappointment and a waste of time.
4 comments:
Hi, I was wondering what recruiter you contacted after footprints?
Hi Christina, I went on Craig's List and replied to one of the ads on there. At the time I questioned the legitimacy of the ad because the reply I got was almost immediate and the guy's emails were very brief and the English wasn't great, but I'm in Korea now working at the school and everything is great. (The recruiter's name was Doyle Kim, he posts a lot on Craig's List)
Another great recruiter (I used them and personally had a wonderful experience with them) was Say Kimchi Recruiting. They provide a lot of information, they are (I believe) American ex-pats living in Korea and provide tons of resources to all knew recruits. Check them out!
Footprints is not a company you want to have anything to do with, ever! I am a professional, experienced ESL educator, and what I saw just during the recruitment process was horrendous. Lack of professionalism, arrogance, flippancy, and plain rudeness is just a start. If you are a teacher looking to go abroad, deal with another service if you can, although most of these types of services are run by complete yahoos and not real educators (take a look at the owner's background as a start). Run fast and run far!
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