Beware of ESL scams

While ESL teaching can be a very rewarding experience, both in terms of making some money and discovering a new society and culture, the market is sufficiently developed to have supported the apparition of scams. Whether out to take your money or benefit from your services without proper payment and without respecting the contract details, these scam companies work in many insidious ways to appear legit. Here are a couple of things you should keep in mind and how some of the scams work.

• There is something wrong with any ESL teaching offer that starts with you paying an amount of money to your future employee, be it for visa, advance rent or a plane ticket. Never agree to pay money upfront, because there is the obvious risk that the respective alleged employer is a fraud who will steal your money. You can ask for the money to be sent to you, so that you can purchase the ticket, or have the plane ticket delivered directly.
• Beware of the ESL teaching job offers that seemed to be too good to be true. In many cases, this is often the case. Unless this is a Middle Eastern country, where the salaries could be as much as 15 – 20 % bigger than in other countries, the annual salary will revolve around the same amount, +/- 10 %. If an employer offers twice that amount, there is definitely something wrong.
• Today, the Internet provides an almost infinite source of information, on all kinds of topics. This means that when you receive a potential ESL teaching job offer, you should spend a good amount of time pouring over all the resources that the Internet offers, including forums where ESL teachers come together and where scams are exposed. If you do not find your potential scam employer among the discussion threads, continue to prod deeper in the research. If it is a school, search it with a search engine and see whether it is legit. If the job is provided through an intermediary, be sure to contact the school yourself to see whether the offer is actually real. Spend at least 1-2 days with this research, since it will reduce the chances of a scam.
• The location of the job should also flag a potential scam. The Seychelles? The Maldives? What is the real probability of such a job coming from these tourist locations where most of the people already speak English?