Recently, I applied to an advertisement on your website for a secondary school teaching post. The ad posted on the ajarn site website, stated the school is searching for secondary school teachers.

A few days after I applied, I got a call from the school asking me to come in for an interview. They asked me if I wanted to do a demonstration class of any kind. They gave me the option of doing such a demonstration class in any discipline I wanted (math, science, social studies, to name a few of the choices). At the time, I thought this seemed a little strange since surely they would have had a specific need for a specific kind of teacher rather than every kind of teacher. At any rate, I chose science. So I was to do a demonstration class for 10th grade students for a science class.

The school is not exactly in a centralized, convenient location. Its on the outer-fringes of Bangkok and not near any mass transit routes at all. Therefore, I drove my scooter all the way from Payatai in the middle of downtown to the school; a 1 hour+ trip through dangerous traffic in the heat in the middle of the day.

When I got to the school, I filled out several application forms and an older man, presumably a teacher at the school, copied my degree and TEFL paper. He interviewed me and asked me questions about my resume. Then, after about 30 minutes of detailed interrogation, he announced that actually the school was not hiring for a secondary school teacher at all. Apparently, they only had one position available, and it was teaching kindergarten. As I have neither experience for nor desire to teach kindergarten, I politely refused. Following this, he kept on going as if he hadnt heard me refuse-- he told me the next step would be to see the director, fill out more papers, etc. I reiterated to him at least 3 times that I was not interested and there are many teachers who would rather teach kindergarten but I'm not one of them. He told me the school has trouble finding teachers to teach kindergarten. I asked him why they don't just place an ad for the job they need filled rather than one for a secondary school teacher. He told me, "sorry, they have only one ad-form for all their job postings" (which, as you can see from the ad they posted on your website, is specifically for secondary school teachers.)

I find it rather funny that this school has the idea they can get a difficult-to-fill post filled by advertising for it under false pretenses of another job title... do they actually think we job seekers are dumb enough to just say, "OK, that's fine, even though I wanted to be a rocket scientist, poop scooping will be just fine.."? But at the same time, it's really annoying and for a remotely-located school such as this one, its a real time-waster... Anyway, thanks for reading.

Phil / ajarn.com says - Thank you Nathan for getting in touch and keeping us informed on this matter. I can appreciate the total waste of time and energy involved. If you send me the contact details of the person you dealt with, I will gladly give them a call and see what can be done. At the very least, we need to let them know that this kind of recruitment practice is unacceptable.

Nathan Busch