I remember how excited I was when I first began teaching many moons ago and how fun the job search was. I was one of five friends that decided to take the plunge together in China. Of course we all got hired in less than 10 days of sending of our resumes, but three of us got scammed , and of course that killed the excitement real quick. Two of us got hit with a "bait and switch scam and salary skim form ghost companies that brought us over on business visas. But the other victim got hit with a scam that cost her almost $10,000 and a full year of grief and no credit. Her BF finally told the story years later to the CTA which published it in their newsletter. Here is clip from that article. Somehow years after we are tricked, we can laugh at our stupidity, but I remember at the time Michelle had swollen red eyes for a week from all the crying she did and we all chipped in to hire her a lawyer to keep her out of jail...
"I laughed when I first heard about this, but after my GF became a victim, it was a wake up call for me. Interpol told us she was one of just 12 million victims world-wide every year, and that 86% of the victims are expats,- and mostly teachers. In Asia roughly 25% of all foreign teachers, become victims. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChinaTeacherAl ... send_your/ "
Yeah, I can vividly recall my first week in China and how excited I was to see The Great Wall and all those friendly Chinese girls, and how cheap it was to go drinking. My excitement ended in 30 days when I got my first paycheck and it was 50% less than promised due to all sorts of bullshit deposits, taxes, and even "teacher supplies". I did a midnight run and got me a much better job that was real at a school owned by foreigners. But I really had a blast during that first month.
I think most of us expats take this resume thing for granted and since we are not rich we think no identity thief would be interested in us. After I read up this at economic crimes law enforcement forum i now realize that is not true at all. With our personal information they can get enough credit to buy a $50,000 new car! The China Teachers Alliance just put out this great sample of a safe resume to use, and it makes a lot of sense to me. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChinaTeacherAl ... rkers_and/
I am going to start using this format. The way I figure, it will also stop my resume from being sold to resume brokers too. No resume brokers means no spam and none of those nagging cold calls and text messages too.
