Skyeng
Skyeng Review
Skyeng <—- (Click here to Apply) is an ESL teaching company from Russia that wants teachers with a university degree and a TEFL/CELTA certificate. It appears that non-natives are welcome to apply, (it looks like many of their teachers are Russian) They use the “Vimbox” platform. Skyeng pays $4-5 USD per hour.
Please leave us your comments and reviews of Skyeng.
29 Comments
Lerien
I was employed by SKYENG in March 2020. I had quite intensive training and was in 7th heaven that I got this job with them! I really liked their set-up, and the methodologists were friendly and helpful.
As soon as COVID 19 hit the world -all the new teachers were ‘let go until September 2020.’
We were all just ‘locked’ out of all our accounts…Slack, etc.
I never heard a word from them, and when I contacted them, they said that I must re-apply!
The job I had with them was as an official teacher, but when I applied for ‘conversation classes’ I was rejected???
They could have been decent in how they handled the COVID situation. They just ‘discarded’ us. No matter what your contract or letter of agreement/appointment says; treat your teachers well, and you will not get bad reviews like this one.
Not professional at all.
Anastasia
Guys, just don’t apply there. I’ve been working for them for 1.5 years, getting quite good money but they cut my lesson rate twice after 2,000 lessons that I’ve taught. They change the contract clauses all the time, and I’m just so tired of them that I wish you all to find something opposite to this school. Just don’t apply here. Not worth it.
Alla Zemskih
Hi Anastasia! I absolutely agree with your opinion. Been working at Skyeng for the past 1.5 years as well. At the moment looking for another school to switch.
Bureaucracy and KPI is just driving me crazy at Skyeng. Also that they want teachers to sell more hours to the students, which I believe is a job for sales department.
Miss Chicka
As of March 2020, I am not taking on more clients at Skyeng due to the reasons I’ve listed. I’ve moved back abroad, working full-time as a teacher, and have other online tutoring companies that I can get supplemental income from. I hope everyone looking for information about this company reads the reviews here and makes a solid decision. Good luck!
Miss Chicka
Now that I am no longer full-time at this company I can say it is OK to work for as stated previously in my other comments. I still do believe however that there are better companies to work for as the KPI policy is still in place. As a tutor you shouldn’t have to beg your clients to have multiple classes with you. It’s their prerogative if they want to or not. But now they are paying bonuses so you’re getting +2 USD added to each session however if your KPI levels are low, you might have very low amount of classes.
Don’t think as a tutor that’s what you want. But that’s a judgement call you would have to make.
Anastasia
I’ve been working for this company for almost year and I really love it. Yes, they payment is not high ($4-5 per 25/40 mins lesson) but they’re really flexible guys. This is one of those school that provides you with students, materials, great platform Vimbox and not bothering curators. I’m non-native English speaker but if you are, their payment is much higher (up to $20). This is a growing company, they also provide you with qualification courses and all the materials you need for teaching. I would definitely recommend it.
Miss Chicka
Some updates.
Payments are now stretched from 24 hours on Monday to 72 hours (Monday – Wednesday) . This isn’t good.
They still haven’t addressed the regulatory slap they’ve received from the government about showing improper content to young students (not editing for their audience, teaching students 16 and below content for adults, not using a curriculum fully, etc)
How is booking?
The scheduling department books new students for you. Once you establish a good relationship you can book classes with your students independently. You can move classes around, put them on vacation, and delete their classes (if they have a paid up account).
Enough students?
They give you enough students but the quality of students has changed and the number of faulty no classes but scheduled has increased.
I remember when new students were orientated to Vimbox, had laptops or desktops, and had a Skype account. Now there are more students who aren’t orientated to Vimbox, work from a tablet or mobile (which doesn’t work for Vimbox or with online teaching as a whole), and don’t have a Skype account. Plus there are students added to your schedule that hadn’t paid, taking that session away from someone that has a paid up account. This happens constantly. You can get around it by checking the student’s profile or moving the student to a different location on your master schedule page (because you can’t really delete the class once it’s at a zero, your manager had to do it. You used to but not anymore). It’s a bad thing and takes up time and money.
About the website? Bonuses?
Nope that’s a lie. Bonuses aren’t given like that just for having silver and gold students. If that was the case I would be paid more. In order to get bonus, retention has to be at 90%, discipline at 90%, and intensity at 5. Hardly anyone gets it and when people do, they don’t pay on time. The slack account is riddled with people asking, “Where’s my bonus money?”
Opinion:
If you want to work here, cool, but you can find higher paying, lot less complicated hiring, better edited, online English tutoring company than this one. Granted they have clients, but you gotta ask yourself, “would you be selling yourself short working for this particular company?” Many more on this website that pay double or triple what they give non-natives. Native workers would get the hours so it depends on other factors whether you work here or not.
Sarah
I am very interested in this company, because I would like to boost my resume.
Are there any recent updates/changes?
What’s the booking like?
Do they give you enough students??
Just finished reading this article http://eslonlinejobs.com/2019/04/16/skyeng-review-teach-english-to-russian-students/ and it was really helpful but I wanted to know more about what working for them is really like these days.
Thanks, everyone.
Alex
I don’t mind working for them, they seem very chill about everything. It is true that they leave you alone. At first they asked for us to submit recordings of any classes done over skype instead of the platform. I haven’t done it in months and noone has confronted me. I’ve been teaching for a while and make 12USD.
I have no complaints about the work or the company; my supervisor is very kind, the materials are good and it’s very low pressure. The KPI policy above by Miss Chicka doesn’t actually risk your job, it just qualifies you for a bonus. I don’t put effort into this and it doesn’t bother me, although I am not looking to depend on online ESL for long periods of time.
I am a Canadian and would prefer to work with a Canadian ESL company so I don’t have to worry about taxes.
If anyone who teaches/has taught at SkyEng who is in the Ottawa/Montreal area, it would be great to get in contact, compare notes and meetup if that’s cool.
Alex
Miss Chicka
Hey. Thanks for the quote. The KPI’s are actually not that great as most don’t get the bonus as well as low KPI’s will prevent you from getting new clients. I’m glad you’re not depending on online ESL work. 🙂
TheJapanator
Hey Alex I just got enrolled in this online school and I am from Montreal. I am currently working as an English teacher in Japan. If you want a buddy message me back. Take care man.
Anon
They pay 5$ per hour. They expect a university degree…
Who in their right mind would do this for 5$ even without one?
They should ask that you’ve visited the ISS to boot!
Jane
Stay away! This company is actually dangerous. I had a lot of older men who suddenly wanted lessons and there was a lot of sexual nuances. I was disgusted. One was sitting on his couch drinking alcohol while I was trying to teach him. He didn’t take me or the classes seriously. When I complained I was told to just teach the class anyway. One was in his office and kept fiddling under his desk and switching the video camera on and off. I stopped these classes. I was reprimanded for that as I “lost” students. No one was interested in listening to what happened. I sent countless messages and emails and nobody cared. Then some students don’t come to class and you wait for half an hour. This happened so regularly that I was amazed when someone actually showed up for a class. Sometimes they book a student and no one knows who the student is and you wasted your time waiting for the student to arrive. They are disorganised, very rude and don’t make sure their teachers are safe online. Please don’t waste your time with this bunch. They treat their teachers very badly and won’t even listen to your complaints.
Alna
Hi Jane,
I have an interview upcoming with Skyeng this week. I would be really grateful to you if you can give some headups on what kind of grammatical questions they ask. And what is the pattern of their interviewing? I would be really great if you can tell me some main topics that I can emphasize more on.
Regards
alna
maria
Alna, did you pass your interview??
Magzhan
Very good question))
Telly
Lousy school and unprofessional behaviour from the staff. They are unsympathetic and short-tempered with teachers.
Miss Chicka
Hold off working here until:
1. They do away with their KPI policy.
What is that?
Tutors are judged by how many students they are able to keep and how often those students have classes.
Why is this bad?
It’s bad because students are various. Some students like to study for a couple of weeks, some months, some years.
They have other departments that are supposed to retain those students but nothing is known of whether or not those departments are fulfilling their job duties.
By making the tutors have to retain students, it puts undue pressure on selling the product ( Vimbox, English Marathon, English non-stop, Skyeng word app, Skyeng club) instead of actual teaching. Even with effort going to maintain said students, it is still at the student’s discretion to study at Skyeng or not.
This puts long term tutors in jeopardy who have an established student base. This is due to Skyeng’s calculation of students to teachers and how often those students
have classes. Some of those students they have come back in 3 to 6 months, not as frequent as the school might like.
Students are also being forced to having longer held lessons than what they previously anticipated.
Tutors are not getting a raise to fulfill these extra tasks.
I still believe Skyeng is a decent school however their internal issues are causing many good tutors to become fearful of losing their jobs over losing a student. Because
of that, I advise any future employees of the company to reconsider working here until they fix whatever it is hurting their bottom line. It could be incorporating
company contracts and disbanding individual client contracts, it could be readjusting the level in which they measure their KPI’s, but I would hate for a future employee
of the company to have to email old students and beg them to attend classes back at Skyeng just to keep their job. That’s a no-bueno.
Alna
Hi Jane,
I have an interview upcoming with Skyeng this week. I would be really grateful to you if you can give some headups on what kind of grammatical questions they ask. And what is the pattern of their interviewing? I would be really great if you can tell me some main topics that I can emphasize more on.
Regards
alna
Miss Chicka
Hi Jane,
I hope you had gotten the job or went with a company somewhere else. My opinion about Skyeng is mixed. Although it has a good client base (meaning you will have enough clients therefore enough money per month) their content, policies, etc aren’t great. There’s a huge promotional thing/ team building thing happening in Slack rather than dealing with violating regulations in Russia, the KPI policy, and bonuses. I have personally been put on pause by admin (not accepting new students) due to my KPIs and I keep around 80% for 3 months or more. Very few people get bonuses. When they do get their bonuses it takes the company some time to pay. Many people on slack asking about their bonuses now. The regulations slap came from the young learner section of the company. If the company gets more regulation slaps, it could be the end of the company.
But money is here. Outside of policy they leave you alone but if they company doesn’t deal with it’s administrative issues there may be no company left. I advise anyone looking to get into the business to have at least 2 more companies on hand just in case one goes belly up.
Teresa
Skyeng conducts group interviews where there is no confidentiality as all candidates get to hear what the others are saying. The interviewer does not even switch on her video cam and only uses the audio function for the interview. If you do not have any online ESL teaching experience, she will snub you and that makes you feel like you are wasting her time. She is unprofessional, curt and rude. Apply only if you wish to be involved in a group interview where all your personal data are disclosed to a group of competitors all vying for the same job!
Alna
Hi Teresa,
I have an interview upcoming with Skyeng this week. I would be really grateful to you if you can give some headups on what kind of grammatical questions they ask. And what is the pattern of their interviewing? I would be really great if you can tell me some main topics that I can emphasize more on.
Regards
alna
Nina
They ask a lot during the interview. Too much, and some impossible grammar questions…
Not worth trying.
Alna
Hi Nina,
I have an interview upcoming with Skyeng this week. I would be really grateful to you if you can give some headups on what kind of grammatical questions they ask. And what is the pattern of their interviewing? I would be really great if you can tell me some main topics that I can emphasize more on.
Regards
alna
Miss Chicka
Work for Skyeng. Very good company. Pay 10 USD to start. Don’t bother you. Quality control isn’t messaging you all the time.
Downside is their platform, Vimbox. Solid content. Can see methodology. Odd phrases here and there, but normal for overseas ESL online company. The worst bit is how the content is displayed. Some tabs are copy and paste pages from a book, not really suitable for language learning.
But they have clients, they pay, and they leave you alone.
I say work here.
Alna
Hi Chicka,
I have an interview upcoming with Skyeng this week. I would be really grateful to you if you can give some headups on what kind of grammatical questions they ask. And what is the pattern of their interviewing? I would be really great if you can tell me some main topics that I can emphasize more on.
Regards
alna
Miss Chicka
As of this day, I would say to avoid this company given what I have typed below. The tricky situation is that this is still a company that has clients, therefore there is still money to make there but how they treat their tutors, the aggressive marketing tactics, “make every client” plan regardless of if they are the right fit for online tutoring, the lack of editing they do on their curriculum where some parts are simply copy and paste from a book-not digitized and not suitable for young learners-read below, and the overall “well we just don’t care, we’re here to make money off of this venture” type of attitude from top down makes it not a good place to work in my opinion.
There are a lot of new companies that have opened that pay more, have a better curriculum, don’t have aggressive marking tactics, don’t adopt the “make every client” plan, and are not sloppy and indifferent as this company. It’s still a good place to work short-term or part-time, but long-term, full-time…no. And given there are other companies to choose from I wouldn’t immediately choose this company as a place to want to work at. It’s kinda seedy, exploitative on both clients and tutors, and there’s other companies to work for.
Jane
They pay 4-5$ per 60 min
Lalo Black
That is terrible money for an online teacher. I will stay with Chinese schools! 4 or 5 dollars an hour?