What I’ve gathered from this sub is that Nova isn’t the best company to work for, unfortunately it seems to be my only choice from my lil 3rd world country. I understand do not take their accommodation and many people suggest to not take the independant contractor….well contract.
I want to know if this sub has any advice for working with them as well as if it would be possible once I’m in Japan to move to a different company or job. Thanks in advance.
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I heard from friends who worked in Japan that people who have been in Japan for a long time to avoid Gaba and Nova like the plague
1. I heard Nova makes you pay for using their textbook. What kind of company makes employees pay for using the teaching materials?
2. Gaba apparently doesn’t even pay for transportation, health insurance, training. Apparently they don’t pay you if your lessons don’t get filled, so that’s alot of unpaid waiting time.
It’s a company. It’ll be ok. There will be things you don’t like and things you enjoy. A lot of people are complainers by nature. Every tiny arse little fucking thing is a problem. And when there isn’t a problem, they will create one. In life, how many things are actually as bad as people say they are. Nobody has anything positive to say. I know why I left, but I also know that if I needed money I’d work there no problem.
And look at the sources of the comments. I heard that….I heard. I heard. Listen to those that work there NOW. I did two stints at Nova. Before and after the meltdown. Two very different companies.
People telling shit they heard are helping nothing. Just contributing to the shit rumours.
If you’ve held down a job before and you can deal with small kids you’ll quickly notice that it is extremely easy work.
i did a 1 yr contract with them several yrs ago. i chose contract because the pay is slightly higher and i didn’t plan on staying so i thought completion of contract would look better than quitting on my resume. downside was no PTO (but you can swap days and they’ll find an open spot for you), and all taxes/pension/insurance is on you and they didn’t help at all (not even answering questions). i tried not to be picky and asked for no more than 1 hr commute, which they obliged and my main branch was only 30 minutes, but the 2 on weekends were cutting it close. my particular DM and GM also loved to nitpick on clothing that was technically within guidelines, *they* just didn’t allow it.
in general the environment is a gamble. i got a bad one and assumed it was like that everywhere until i happened to swap a day in a more quiet residential area outside of my DM’s reign of terror and it was so laid back! if a student was a no-show i could ask for “administrative duties” in order to get base pay instead of zero, but that usually meant cleaning something nasty or shoving tissue packs at people on the street. only favorites or teachers with insane seniority got regular weekends off. most of us had to work weekends and most holidays. (also, in my case i was lied to and told we’d be off golden week but nope.) the textbooks were full of mistakes and unnatural english, so i kept extensive notes since prep time is limited. tardiness penalties were strictly enforced (even 1 minute).
a good rule of thumb is start off doing exactly everything they say, no matter what you see. it takes time to figure out which rules can be bent or broken by anyone or only favorites.
hope this helps but if you have any questions just ask!
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms, but I’d consider the following:
– Your experience will vary a lot depending on the local management, it’s unfortunately a luck of the draw thing. You do have the option of requesting to change area after 6 months as an employee or at the contract renewal as a contractor, though.
– For a lot of people entering this field, they’re fresh out of University with no previous full-time work experience, so I find some tend to exaggerate as they’ve not got anything prior to compare it to. This isn’t always the case, there are definitely many true horror stories.
I’ve found the work itself to be quite enjoyable, but the company is questionably run to say the least. I see a lot of people suggesting using the job to get to Japan and then getting a job elsewhere, there’s no harm in seeing for yourself what it’s like and moving on.