BlingABC

Hello! My name is Arthur and I am currently an online ESL teacher with BlingABC. Frankly speaking, the name of BlingABC didn’t really ring a bell with me at the beginning—there are simply too many “ABCs” these days! Before BlingABC, I worked for several online companies in China, and either they kept giving me very unstable hours with random students or some of them simply vanished out of the blue. I would be lying if I say that I didn’t have doubts on BlingABC, so I did a bit of research on BlingABC and I was surprised to learn that it is actually the subsidiary of New Oriental! For those of you who are not familiar with New Oriental, I can only tell you it is without doubt the biggest player in terms of private tutoring business in China and I worked with them as a material consultant for about a year. Basically, without any exaggeration literally everybody in China knows New Oriental, it is a NYSE listed company, you guys are welcome to google it. I guess it released my tension a bit. As instructed on their website, I submitted the application and within a day or two I received the invitation to the demo-class interview and booked a session. The interview was a pleasant one, perhaps the best experience by far. The interviewer for me was very helpful and friendly. Now that I think of it, I was being a bit assertive with all the questions about booking rate and program arrangement. But the interviewer has been surprisingly patient and informative. For some of the specific information about scheduling and training was not to his knowledge, but he managed to answer all the questions few minutes after the interview. One other factor that surprised me is how proficient they are in English! Not only the interviewer but also the trainers from the later sessions, they were all so proficient & eloquent in English. I had my struggle with one of my previous companies when they couldn’t even answer my questions about the class accordingly, it seemed that sometimes they couldn’t even “guess” what I meant. With BlingABC, the communication has been very comfortable and efficient. One thing I’ve noticed over longer term, they know what they are doing, and they are serious about it. There are additional training sessions to complete if you want to get more hours and teach variety of courses. The sooner you complete your application, trainings will get yourself towards the top of the scheduling list. Your effort, performance definitely pays off later. It could be a bit handful when you realized that there is still a long procedure to go through before you get scheduled with classes. But knowing that they are offering continuous programs which means there will be fixed and consistent schedule in the actual teaching, it is understandable that they need those processes to ensure the quality of the course. In addition, what they are looking for in a teacher besides your teaching skills and experience is your punctuality, commitment. I have come across many so called “Online English teacher”, saying how much experience they’ve had, how many companies they’ve worked with. I always believe your performance would tell it all, if not, why do you keep switching companies, one of the reasons might be you are not in the company’s favor and trust for more hours. Personally, I also prefer to have the chance to see my students’ progress. In a nutshell, I finished the orientation, training session and the mock class in a week. I got an A from the mock class and from what I was told, a grad A will get my slots filled up faster. But it happened a bit later than I expected, it turned out that due to the various starting dates of different programs, the time slots would not be filled up right at the start. It filled up gradually in a month, which now I see as a better way to go. Things might be a bit overwhelming if I was offered with a full-filled schedule at the very beginning, I took the one-month time to get myself more comfortable with the teaching platform and the pace of the classes. Now that I’ve been teaching with BlingABC for over a year now, my basic rates has bumped up to $30 +bonuses and I have a schedule of approximately 22 classes per week, so I guess I’ve come to the right place for online teaching. For those of you who plan to have a continuous program and are seriously interested in teaching, I would recommend you to give it a try with BlingABC. In a long run, it is more rewarding than you might expect. I also would like to point out for certain group of teachers I’ve encountered, if quick money, start teaching in a few days, full schedules and guaranteed hours are what you are aiming for. BlingABC is not for you! If you are looking for rewarding experience, competing for excellence in teaching, creating the bond with students over long term and working with professional people, then BlingABC is the right place.