What inspired you to work for Noon Elite Recruitment?
Ben, the founder, was one of my mates from college. After we both did TEFL abroad it was really good to do something interesting to earn a living. We're a small firm with a casual approach to working hours as long as the jobs get done and the teachers are looked after and we even get to play a little PlayStation in the office when things are quiet.
Describe a typical day at work.
I get into work about 8am an hour before most to avoid the city rush hour traffic in Nottingham. I usually start with my emails; answering any questions that candidates have asked me. Then in the mornings, I usually work my way through updating a few of our job adverts on the internet and emailing a few clients searching for China positions and asking them to consider one of our programs.
Then usually from around 11am, I tend to do the video interviews for candidates who have applied for one of our positions. I usually head home before 3pm to once again avoid rush hour and I have the rest of the day free.
Me at my desk at work. Two laptops - I'm clearly watching YouTube videos on one!
Why do you do what you do?
I do this because I really enjoyed doing a travel and TEFL placement myself. So it's something that I feel I have experience with and can help others and at the same time it's such an interesting topic to me that it doesn't feel like work.
I see many other people do these jobs that they don't really like just for the money and it seems so crazy to me because we spend such a big proportion of our daily lives working. This makes me really appreciate my job. I love what I do.
What is your favorite part of your job?
Talking with the candidates is my favorite part of the job as it gives me the opportunity for me to talk about all the fun I had teaching abroad without feeling guilty that I'm boring the person as they tend to be really interested in a placement abroad too.
What is also really cool is because we interview lots of candidates here. Although I've talked about my experiences hundreds of times, it's new for each candidate. It's really cool to see their eyes light up when I tell them some of the great things about teaching abroad and you can see the excitement in their expressions.
This gives me lots of positive energy to feed off and gives me lots of energy and enjoyment to keep sharing my stories and listen to things our candidates have done. Some have done some crazy interesting stuff. One had been to North Korea on vacation! That's probably the wildest one I've heard so far!
How do you use your education and international background in your current role?
Well, I wasn't sure if my degree was going to be directly useful but it turns out it was a requirement for me to do a TEFL position. So I used my degree to allow me to do a placement abroad which in turn enabled me to help others in my current role.
As I've already mentioned in other questions, my first hand experience of TEFLing abroad is what makes me able to relate and inform candidates about our positions and so it's something that I rely on and use constantly in my role as a recruitment agent here at Noon Elite.
What challenges do you often face and how do you overcome them?
My biggest challenge was I was initially nervous when doing my first few interviews. I'm quite introverted so I found it difficult to take the boss seat for the interview and ask candidates all these questions.
Luckily my colleague Ben had done quite a few interviews by then and showed me that assessing a candidate is implicit. Rather than asking them direct questions and judging the answers, I got a feel for the candidates skills and abilities by talking to them and once I felt more comfortable with them the right questions naturally came much easier and I soon got my confidence. Now interviews are my favorite part of the job.
What are some current projects you are working on?
At work, I am responsible, in our small agency, for emailing candidates. I spend a lot of time targeting and thinking about the kind of candidates out there our positions would really help. I really hate spam mailing and so our agency sends some of the fewest emails I know of any in the industry and I spend the time saved emailing by researching and reaching out to only a very few candidates that are explicitly looking for the kind of role we have.
As a result, we may lose a few candidates, but in return we avoid pestering a huge amount of people with lower quality emails and I feel good about this. I don't want to be one of those guys who slowly dies inside doing something that you know is annoying. I just wish all the other companies in the world followed suit and cut the amount of emails they send!
What advice would you tell your pre-travel self?
Just that all those natural worries I had about traveling to a foreign country like fearing to lose my luggage on the way, the fear of not liking it and being stuck there, etc, were not worth stressing about. It's natural to be anxious with such a major change of lifestyle but ultimately it's a lot of fun and you grow so much.
This is where an agency such as ourselves comes in. It can be so helpful to have reassurance from someone who has been through the same stuff. I like to think we've made the process a lot less scary for lots of people over the past 8 years.
What makes Noon Elite Recruitment special?
We're not sellouts. We have our teachers best interests at heart and unlike the majority of agencies, we mean that and can prove it! Heard of Chinatefler.com? We made that. Seen the day of a life of a China teacher vid by influencers MaMahuhu? That's our teacher Dhiten!
It's not totally unique, but we're special because we're small and friendly and we've all done the kind of placements we work with ourselves. Were special to me because we were a tiny company, only 4 of us to this day!
And so there's not that corporate BS and clocking in a required amount of time. When the work is done, we go home and in the rare case we are super busy we work a bit longer but overall we don't work 40 hours a week and we certainly don't do any work for the sake of it.
So if you choose our agency you get down to earth agents who act like a big brother or sister and look out for you and hook you up with the best positions. Because we are not in it for the money we don't get blindsided by sending candidates to worse schools that pay better and in turn this has built us a solid reputation for the best schools and positions out there.
As such, it was really hard to get going as money was tough and nobody knew our firm was legit. But now that we are 8 years old, we have hundreds of good reviews and solid experiences. We are discovering that we get a lot of teachers with our strategy of finding the best positions for them.
All agencies say they do this, but most don't, in my opinion. Some others do and were one of the good guys, and I like that. If it was just for the money I would go and be a financial analyst or something!
Me posing for a pic. About as corporate as I ever want to look!
Why should someone choose Noon Elite Recruitment over competitors?
Because we will do our job and look after you before, during, and after your placement. We're not in it for a quick buck. We genuinely do look after you and have hundreds of our candidates that will back us up!
If you look at recruitment agencies for TEFL placements, particularly China TEFL placements, there are so many new companies popping up. Their website doesn't even have an address! Now compare that to us. We have 8 years of records, reviews, and online activity.
We have names and verifiable details of our teachers and others on chinatefler.com when they review their time on placement. We are something very special in that we've proven we are not a flash in the pan agency and our service has stood the test of time as a really good, highly rated service that goes above and beyond in taking care of you.
We are the only China TEFL recruitment agency I know of that goes out there and actually visits and socializes with teachers that are sent out. We really care for you. Now I'm sure there are a few other great ones. In my opinion, these are the ones that have likewise been in the business for years and are ex-teachers themselves.
What makes us good, in my opinion, is that we have worked hard to build transparency. We are the only agency with an independently run China review site that not only shares our teachers' views, but also is run by other TEFL teachers.
I would say we are the most transparent TEFL agency in the world that has solid reviews and although it took years to build and a lot of work, I'm really proud of this and think you should consider us if you're looking for a placement.
What hopes do you have for the future for Noon Elite Recruitment?
For the future I hope we finish our app on iPhone. We already built our app on Android but haven't yet got the resources to finish the Apple version and actually Ben, my colleague , learned to code and built it himself as we can't afford the big budgets needed for an app.
I think it's really cool as it combines so many of our new features such as a job matcher that asks you questions and recommends you the best school. It also has a salary research tool that shows your salary compared to all the other salaries to make sure your offer is a good one.
Finally, the app has a cool chat group so you can talk with other candidates before going out. Before we only had a Facebook group, so it's cool that you can chat on the app without needing any external account.
Are there any developments with your organization that you would like to share with us?
I would like to share that we have built a Jobmatcher app that asks you questions and can recommend you a school based on the answers you give. It's obviously not perfect but it's a bit of fun and may help you consider a location that you didn't know about before.
You can check it out at Noon Elite Recruitment Jobmatcher for opportunities. Also Salarymatcher, in a country such as China that is super secretive about job offer salaries. Our platform makes it easy to compare your salary across that city and company and enables you to get the best offer. Find the best English teaching jobs in China with our virtual job comparison tool.
What makes Noon Elite Recruitment easy to market to potential participants?
The facts that were genuinely useful. Our service is free for candidates, our income is earned by a single one off placement fee from the employer if a candidate is successfully hired so our candidates keep 100% of their salary and don't pay us a penny.
Our service then looks out for them, advises the best positions for them and educates them to choose whatever placement they like at a quality employer that we know will take care of them.
What is your organization's mission and how do you continue to work toward it?
Our mission was kinda cheesy at the start as we didn't know what a mission statement was and then. Ben looked up a mission statement from his A-level business lessons in college and we agreed on 'Amazing jobs for amazing People'.
Which I think is the best attempt we had at saying we will help candidates find a really good job in China and in return the employer gets a really good candidate who we know, like, and have confidence in doing a great job at work.
It's a win-win-win as hopefully the candidate will be happy with a great job, the employer with a great team member and us because we get to work in a job doing something we love.
What do you hope participants take away from your programs?
I hope that participants have as much fun in their placements as we had. All of us here loved our time abroad and if you think about it, you'd kinda expect people to love their positions if they then go on and dedicate their careers helping others to do the same thing.
I hope each one of our candidates is able to grow, build confidence, and see the world during their placement. I'm pleased to say that if you look at the reviews on ChinaTEFLer, it looks like they are doing that!
How do you help support participants?
We help participants by sharing our experience with the placements. From knowledge gained over years of working with these positions, we can help with anything job related a candidate asks.
For example, if you like to go hiking on weekends, we know placements in Chinese cities with a great walking club - that would be almost impossible to find on your own without being able to read Chinese and use the Chinese search engines!
If you could participate on one of your organization's programs, where would you go and what would you do?
Well we only work with China because we would rather know a lot about a little than a little about a lot of places and spread ourselves too thin. I would recommend China. It really is the center of the modern world right now.
Pandemic? It's widely reported to have started in China. It's the second largest economy in the world, it's where almost all the gadgets in your house are made. It's a fascinating country with a rich culture and a really fulfilling language to learn. On top of all that, the opportunities are very well paid there. It's really safe for our teachers and is super modern.
What questions do participants often ask you, and how do you typically respond?
A big one we get is how long did it take you to learn Chinese. About 2 years of living there seems average if you study hard and make an effort. Another one we often get asked is about the food. We reassure those candidates who are vegetarian that there are veggie options available.
Many other candidates ask about health care. We reassure candidates that health insurance is actually provided with 100% of our placements and any official working visa placements in China as it is required by Chinese law. This is a great piece of mind.
Why is it important for people to travel abroad and experience new cultures?
I believe living and working in another culture does more to develop you as a person than any other experience I have had in my life. If I can describe it, it's like living my entire life and having values aligned a certain way and assuming them to be the only way to think.
Suddenly, I'm living in some sort of parallel universe and things I took for granted are seen as much bigger, and other things I struggled with are in abundance.
Why do you think learning a new language is important?
They say it rewires your brain. I don't know much about science but I know for me, once I learned a second language, things in general, but especially other languages and computer code languages, became so easy to understand.
I think it's really good to indirectly make you faster at learning things. Directly, it's so cool as an English speaker to be able to listen in on a Chinese or Spanish conversation and suddenly converse with them.
Especially for English as a first language speakers, I think it's really impressive as it shows you have done something that you didn't need to do (as lots of people know at least some English)!
What advice do you have for individuals thinking about going abroad?
I would advise them to check out all the cool resources about going abroad. There is soo much great content out there these days that anyone with a smartphone or laptop can see hours of great quality first hand footage of what it's really like anywhere in the world.
There's 4k drone footage nowadays of pretty much any travel destination on earth, all for free on YouTube. For work placements, such as being an English teacher in China, you can check out a vid such as the one of our teacher Dhiten on Youtube.
Once they have looked it up they can then decide if a position is for them and then use a resource such as here at goabroad.com to find an agency that they feel will help guide them along the way. I believe a good agency is really helpful particularly for those candidates who may not have thought a position through.
For example, most candidates find great positions in China. However, occasionally we are equally proud when we inform a candidate about China and they realize it wasn't for them, as it saves them a lot of time and stress going somewhere they really didn't feel comfortable going.
I believe this is another great use of a decent agency rather than an employer as an employer will more likely be focused around their own school rather than putting the candidates first.
Our office in Nottingham. It looks really cool but we only have one room, not the whole building!
What does meaningful travel mean to you?
OK, I'm doing this without looking it up on google to test me so please forgive if it's wrong. But for me, meaningful travel means going somewhere and actually seeing that culture and mixing with it. Talking with the locals, learning from each other, and using their tourist resources in a sustainable manner.
A good example, I think, would be to go to a lesser known Chinese city, teach the kids English and, represent your own country in a positive light whilst respecting local customs, learning Chinese from the locals, and attending/learning about the local land and culture. This is the kind of placement we do at Noon Elite.
What issues do you see in the world of international education that don’t line up with your values and expectations for mutually beneficial & educational relationships between providers/programs and the communities in which they are located within?
Ok please forgive the essay but this is something we're very passionate about and we've talked about this a lot at work.
We work with China, for China we all at Noon Elite have first hand seen how so many schools in China started, lost their way chasing the money and went bankrupt. My colleague Ben saw Chinese sales reps in his school pressure kids one on one to pressure their parents to sign them up to super expensive schools. We've also seen the dark side of schools.
Some less reputable schools that we would never, ever work with, are terrible. They hire Russians that look foreign to the working class Chinese parents, charge the parents a fortune and then the teachers can't even speak English let alone teach it in a professional, structured course! Sickening!
What is particularly evil about this is that statistically, Chinese parents particularly spend over 50% of their household incomes, many working grueling hours in local factories, to pay for their child's education. This is something dark that has evolved from a number of factors and makes the work of reputable firms all the more important to do due diligence and protect candidates from never working with such schools.
A big solution to this in China, and although I'm non political credit to the authorities on this one, was done last year in April 2021 was the implementation of the 'double reduction' policy. This makes all training schools, where this overcharging was rife were compulsorily made, register as non profits. Then, a very affordable price cap of 20rmb/class hour was required which removed the tempting profits that many companies driven by greed were looking for. Overnight some of the biggest Chinese employers went under and disappeared.
So, an answer to the question: the issue of short term wealth conflicting with education is what I see as the big challenge and as written above. I'm pleased to say a number of measures for China have been implemented. Furthermore, our entire tiny lean agency architecture has been built to show we're not in it for them money, have stood the test of time, and have the reviews to prove this.
Note: for sources on this please don't hesitate to get in touch and I'll be happy to give you references for the things you need.
What does ethical global engagement mean to you?
Once again to test I'm not googling it, it's not much. However, I feel that it will mean providing engagement with employers and candidates around the world in a decent, sustainable manner. Once again, our long track record and impartial chinatefler review site hopefully shows that our positions are mutually decent for all parties involved.
All sides get something positive out of our placements in a way that will hopefully be sustainable to provide these placements for the foreseeable future. I believe this is where ethics comes in. Such positions that genuinely help all parties are decent, make the work a better place, and are therefore ethical.
What hopes do you have for the future of international education?
Specifically for China, but relatable to the world, I want to give a shout out to how much it has improved in the 8 years we've worked with them. Schools are now more professional with background checks and child protection measures far better enforced.
Employment positions now take better care than ever of teachers with mandatory health insurance and other perks for employees and harder barriers than ever for illegal and unqualified candidates to cheat the system. The one thing that I see as a concern for improving international education is the global political uncertainty.
For international education to flourish, I believe we need a free and welcoming exchange of opinions, views, and knowledge across the world. I hope that all nationalities of peaceful educational professionals will be safe and welcomed in other countries regardless of current political climates.
Yes, the obvious example I would use to illustrate this is for an American lecturer to feel safe and welcomed teaching English in a school in Moscow. I believe better education leads to better understanding and will ultimately be the only step towards an ideal of world peace. Even if we never get that, at least we will have a safer and safer world with less and less fighting and xenophobia.
Apart from talking to candidates, I enjoy leading the interns from the University of Nottingham. They helped us develop some new social media adverts.
What qualities in program & host community relations are important to you? (And Noon Elite Recruitment?)
Honesty, there will always be the odd problem that occurs such as a candidate not getting on with the local staff because of a cultural misunderstanding. If we are told about it faster we are then able to mediate and solve a small issue for all sides before it becomes a bigger problem.
After years of working with the Chinese and building trust with our partner employers there, we are better able to get the truth when employers have any issues with a candidate in contrast to the typical Chinese cultural thing of avoiding confrontation. We believe this has enabled us to better look after our staff.
How is your company handling Covid protocols? What should participants know about your Covid readiness? How are you assisting participants with navigating the new travel landscape?
Covid wiped out many Western-China agencies. We froze the company and I worked as a mailman. Ben worked as a coder for a year while things were on pause. Regarding China, the border has only just reopened and we regularly post updates on our blogs and directly to candidates about any covid measures that we believe they should be aware of.
I'm pleased to say that the situation is looking much better now. You can read our full latest update here.