WORK AT THE FORWARD THINKING-EST CALL CENTER IN BAGUIO! Calling all online tutors, call center agents, man-to-man tutors, grammar editors and virtual assistants!Consider this an invitation to live in Baguio City and work in a call center so unconventional, it redefines the word. We are RSVP. If the blood tests are accurate, we are 100% Filipino-owned; and if we are to tally up the ridiculous amounts of money that we have sunk into facilities, equipment and ISPs, we are a CALL CENTER. Our educational partners are fifteen of the biggest names in Korean online English education; and if we are to take their word for it, we are the “very best ENGLISH TUTORS they have ever had the privilege and honor of working with”. (Translation ours) Our corporate mantra is “It’s a smaller world.” It’s that because the internet has made it possible to reach across borders and connect with students and clients from different countries. It’s that because in our world, there are neither Dilberts nor Pointy-haired Bosses. No hot-seating too, it’s first class all the way, baby! Our tutors toil away in style in soundproofed, no-need-to-share-with-Wacky-Wally-or-Smelly-Sally roomlets. In between their toils, our tutors are free to take what they call their “GSL breaks”. That’s Gossip, Smoke and Lunch, beanies. These unquiet, drawn-out affairs are conducted in a quaint gazebo that leaks sunshine or rain, depending on what period of the year it is. The Gossip, Smoke and drawn-out part, you probably understand. The “Lunch” part is delivered by a wheezing stove, which depending how far the current day is from the most recent payroll, churns out an amazingly linear variety of hot meals. To give you an example: Lucky Me noodles and egg (“Aha, it’s one day after payroll!”). Lucky Me noodles, no more egg (“Ah, it’s one week after payroll!”). No noodles and no egg (“Boo, obviously one day before payroll!”). In any case, our tutors have the trusty Manang Itlog’s basket of all things fried, cheap and delicious to fall back on as she comes to the gate every morning. (Oh yes, in place of Dogbert, RSVP has one better. A hot-blooded, moody-kind-of-quirky Korean Jindo named “Jindo” that believes it runs the place instead of its owner, our CEO.) Our original product is Phone English--calling students on the phone to conduct conversational English classes. We are neither tech supporters nor telemarketers. And certainly not bill collectors. We are teachers, tall and proud--and our students, thousands of them, are streamed to us by the biggest English education players (hagwons) in Korea. Our students range from corporate hacks to kids, which allows poor call center derelicts who are lucky enough to become our tutors to get away from the tech-stupids, the Ingrid Not-Interesteds and the screaming deadbeat banshees of the world. It’s all about consistency, this work. Coming in on a daily basis--rain, shine, Red Letter day or public holiday--without feeling the least heroic about it. It comes down to each teacher being accountable for the quality of her individual output, and more importantly taking great personal pride in it. Class calls are outbound, or as we like to say “forefinger-based”, which is to say that your students’ phones won’t ring if you don’t use that particular digit to push their digits on your phone. If you remember to call your students and keep them on the line longer than the minimum 17 seconds, we will remember to pay you. The work, if it is that, is about engaging the students in English conversations---and making gentle grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation corrections on-the-fly. The work, if you still think it that, is helped along by the use of intelligently prepared, compoundingly interesting discussion guides that expound on, say, the long-term effects of global warming or Peak Oil 2040. A tutor may opt to ditch the whole irrelevant kaboodle in favor of free talk centered on, say, the short-term effects of her jealous kitty’s vomit’s color on her snoring boyfriend’s Mickey Mouse fur slippers.Tutors call (or kitty talk) their students daily at agreed-upon time slots for the duration of the class contract, which is anywhere between 14 days to the full lifetime of any tutor who intends to stay that long. (Case in point: some tutors have kept the same students for five, six and seven years now, which sometimes makes us wonder who is doing what right.) When it comes down to it, an RSVP tutor’s goal in life is to convert his or her students into core fans; each one adoring enough to make multiple renewals of the contract---and influential enough to hitch his friends and colleagues onto RSVP’s phone English wagon. Over time, our core product has evolved to almost require a printed restaurant menu. We churn it out in three basic forms now: 1. FORM 1: VOICE ACCOUNTS *the so-called “Pyjamas accounts”, using VOIP phones. 2. FORM 2: VIDEO ACCOUNTS *the so-called “Makeup accounts”, using PCs and Macs running two eLearning video platforms that pushed us to an inch of bankruptcy to develop. 3. FORM 3: NON-VOICE ACCOUNTS *the so-called “Tick-tick account,” to denote the incessant sound of mouse clicks when you are in this floor, evaluating students’ oral and written responses by, yes, clicking down a list. 4. FORM 4: VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE *an account so new, we have no name to so-call it yet. The working schedule redefines another word: flexible. So flexible, in fact, that if it get’s anymore that, our tutors would soon start walking backwards. Going forward, the schedules are as follows: Virtual assistants : 12MN~9AM Phone English tutors : 5AM~9AM, 4PM~11PM Essay editors : 8AM~5PM Online IELTS reviewers : 9AM~11PM Video English tutors : 3PM~11PM Speaking evaluators : 8AM~5PM As you can probably guess by now, we like words. We also like to say that this job allows tutors to do pretty much what they want, for how long they want to and for how much honey-baked bacon they want to lug home. In our smaller world, stress is an option, not Miss Piggy’s way of life. Call it Dial-a-Life, a tutor at RSVP can get his or her working schedule to rotate around family life, even extra-curricular persuasions. Suddenly, pursuing that newfangled Work-Life balance concept or catching up on all the beers you’ve missed when you were a tween suddenly becomes possible. An RSVP employee is welcome to: 1. Work a single shift, a double shift -- and any hour in between 2. Join up to three different accounts, work their hours and duties simultaneously, get paid three different ways and enjoy multiple income streams. Should you choose to keep multiple shifts, keep up a love feud with your partner indefinitely or keep away from life itself, it’s alright for you to bunk beside your cubicle in the evening in order to make the two-feet, two-second morning commute. (We do have a sleeping room, but that’s a significantly longer commute.) For some tutors, the lines between sleeping and working blur sufficiently enough that they opt to shuffle around the call center virtually barefoot and in barely-there pyjamas for the rest of the day. (That’s alright too.) Our corporate philosophy is as simple as simple gets: Have trust, will travel. Meaning, the number of students we assign to each tutor is directly proportional to the level of our trust and confidence. How these two numbers grind against each other depends entirely on how the tutor CHOOSES to perform on a month-to-month basis (Or normal speak again: The more we trust the tutor to take care of the students, the more the future takes care of itself because we can only give the tutor more students.) Our pay rate beats--and turns it over to beat it some more--the established Baguio rate. It also beats the “So sosi, I work in Makati” school of thought, fries that sucker and makes omelets. JolliJeeps are an option, baby: We pay the equivalent of 34 holidays in any given year, which is the number you get when you tally up the accumulated Philippine and Korean holidays. Add to this employee benefits mandated by law (SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-Ibig, Service Incentive Leaves and 13th Month Pay) and those mandated by conscience (“No Late, No Absent” bonus, Fare subsidies and Manager’s Discretionary Incentives), and you get a pretty nifty pay package that leaves enough to buy a big-enough skillet for all those omelets. Oh, did we mention that there is something called the RSVP Five Year Club? Membership is limited to those who have been with us for least five years. You’ll know a member when you see one by the distinctive gold pendant that she wears around her neck. It will have the letters “RSVP” embossed on it. How’s that for nifty? To keep things simple, we have only two hiring qualifications. We’re almost certain that once you interview with us, you’d wonder why you even had to scrape through seven years of four-year college. First qualification: Applicant’s spoken English must approximate that of a native speaker. Second qualification: Applicant’s written English must range anywhere between exemplary and wonderful. Interested? There are three ways to apply: 1. Email us at [email protected] 2. Call us at 0917 5017787 (Globe), 0918 8187787 (Smart) and 0923 8737787 (Sun). 3. Ring our bell at the RSVP Building, 04 First Road, Quezon Hill, Baguio City. You can’t miss our building. It’s huge, Santorini-inspired and so impossibly, impracticably white that it begs for graffiti. If the bell does not work---It’s made in China-- be not afraid, call out. See you at RSVP, brave wanderer. We hope you finally find what you are looking for in our small, unconventional and wonderful world.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 13:36:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015