Got an interview for nova coming up, here’s a list of what they offer. Fifth tick down it sounds like they want the employee to pay for lesson resources. Is that true?!

26 comments

1. Wtf? Although the next check says it’s (possibly) reimbursed??

2. This is some nickel and diming shit. Don’t work for NOVA. What a joke.

3. This is a joke. And yes it does read like they’re making you pay to use materials. Don’t take this job.

4. Yes

   Also – it’s not a “signing bonus”, they’re giving you your pay early

   And I will give you a signing bonus if you ever place in the TOP 50

   If you do see the contract, I will bet you a further signing bonus that all of these (which are mentioned and some likely won’t be and therefore not exist) will have asterisks for their asterisks

   Please be careful

5. My account is riddled with so many posts explaining why I had such a bad time with this place. Not writing another entire comment like that, but please learn from my mistakes before moving forward with a situation you may be unsure of.

6. It also sounds like you have to pay for training.

7. this listing just looks like such a scam, not one sentence capitalized lol.

8. Don’t accept a position where you have to pay for their resources… there has to be something better out there than that.

9. Sounds like they aren’t making enough money from customers so they are trying to make money off their staff, lol. Like a piramid scheme.

   Any job that asks you to pay upfront for anything is a scam.

10. Who in their right mind would accept these terms

11. Nova is awesome. You can masquerade as a teacher while talking about your girlfriends and music and movies and stuff. You can also scan for hot single women on the daily. lessons are cookie cutter so no brain involved really.

    What more could you ask for?

    /halfsarcasm

12. They forgot to mention how you have to pay them if you happen to take a sick day.

13. These are not good terms and conditions to begin with. You have other options depending on your experience. NOVA has gone downhill and since C-19. They were so so to begin with if you ever go back about a decade and read people’s experiences. Also with this job you are not really teaching you are selling to teach English. You must sell NOVA to your student’s as a product so they can fork over more money for lessons and make NOVA money. This is not a good place to work. AEON is going downhill too. The eikaiwa business is just bleh recently.

14. Nova got me to Japan. Word to the wise, they also pull some fuckery with your airfare reimbursement.

    You have to choose between 2 contracts, salaried or contractor.

    If you’re salaried, then you don’t need a doctor’s note for sick leave and you don’t have to worry so much about your customer service scores, but you don’t get your airfare reimbursement or your contract completion bonus.

    If you’re a contractor, then you can close out empty lessons and go home early (since you won’t be paid for that time anyway), you get your reimbursement and your completion bonus, but the customer service scores kill you.

    They “decided not to offer me a new contract” at the end of my first year because I had an 8.5 and everyone else in my area had a 9.8. Of course, they’d all been there 3+ years, but who cares about that.

    Of course, that was at the beginning of COVID and I remember hearing through the grapevine that they didn’t close down their classrooms until way later than everyone else.

15. This looks like an actual joke (by which I mean I doubt this is real). The compensation offered seems to be barely higher than what would be (officially) poverty level in England (outside London), the United States, or Japan; having to rent materials, pay for training, and pay penalties for taking time off seem to verge on, if not actually be, illegal.

    I realize there are a lot more people willing to try to teach English these days, but my starting compensation was about twice what’s mentioned here when I first came to Japan, and I was teaching about 28 of Nova’s contract hours per week, and none of this nonsense about paying for materials.

    You ought to stay far away from this if it’s real.

16. I worked at Nova.

    It’s a shit company. At the very most use them to come over to Japan and ditch them ASAP. Don’t take their apartment.

    You pay 100 yen per lesson for ‘materials’ which is borrowing the branch’s worn out copy of the text book full of the previous teacher’s coffee stains and scribblings and graciously being allowed to use their echoey classroom.

    Then they give you 100 yen per lesson as ‘overheads’.

    It’s just some accounting BS.

    ​

    The monthly incentives for TOP 50 are also not worth it. I was Top 50 a bunch of times and got a measly 10,000 at the end of my contract for it despite my manager never shutting the fuck up about it.

17. Training fee?!!!?

18. Has anyone actually had a positive experience with nova?

19. Nova and many other places like them are terrible places to work. They treat you worse than most other places who see you as a talking chimp.

    Money is terrible, shifts are terrible, managers tend to be terrible. Had friends have these gigs and they always have horror stories.

    It’s ok for a few months to get your foot in the door. But I’d definitely look for a different job immediately.

20. Looks like they want you to pay for your training too…wtf? That sounds… extremely illegal

21. Let me tell you how much you and anyone else in the eikaiwa system is being screwed over. I stayed at a manboo net cafe the other day. They had a help wanted poster where they offer 280,000 yen per month and six bonuses a year, plus they’re not gonna make you pay for training.

    A net cafe. Entry level position you could get fresh out of high school.

22. That is some bullshit right there. **If you are a full time employee, they cannot legally make you pay for materials, OR make you pay for training.**

    And if you are a freelance contractor, well, then this is acknowledgement you don’t have to take their training, you get to use any materials you want, and it also means they also can’t tell you how to teach – that is, you don’t have to follow their set lesson structure. I wonder how THAT will go for them, considering none of their hires have any training.

    But Nova has always been shady AF, it would not surprise me at all if they plan on making all their teachers pay for lesson materials and training until they get sued – again.

    Don’t work for Nova. Or if you do, JOIN THE UNION and bring this to their attention.

23. Dude if I didn’t know better I’d think this is some r/japancirclejerkcircle satire. Just avoid this school like the plague.

24. Nova is the ComCast of English schools in Japan. They are the lowest paying company and invest nothing in their teachers. This contract states you will make ¥1,200 per lesson but this may not be true. You may make ¥800 per lesson which is the case in Akita prefecture with a caveat that for each student you will make an additional ¥100 with an average of 4 students in the class. But if your class only has 1 student you may make ¥900.. their contracts are onerous and devious and I recommend you find work elsewhere or look actively while working there and learn what you can about their processes to arm you for your future in teaching

25. This is for the Independent Contract which is a scam to be avoided. If you join Nova, only sign the employee contract.

26. Back in 2005, it was a great gig.

    Can’t believe people put up with the shit they’re offering these days though.