Ethical job ad posting

This morning I received the following e-mail from a school who had recently advertised for teachers on ajarn.com.

Hi Philip, Do you know this website? (link provided) They have advertised our job but we've never asked them to do so. I suspect they copy ads from your website to populate their own website

I get quite a few e-mails of this nature. I'm fully aware that there are several Thailand TEFL websites that copy and paste job ads from ajarn.com on a daily basis. Perhaps 'stealing' is too strong a word but stealing is what it undoubtedly is. And I know these jobs have come from ajarn.com because if I personally make corrections to the job ad text and that exact same text appears on another site, it could only have come from one source. 

Before I get into this topic, let me say right off the bat that I've got nothing against anyone setting up a Thailand TEFL job website and perhaps trying to supplement their income with revenue from Google Adwords. I'm not out to destroy anyone's business here. There's no reason why ajarn.com should have a monopoly on this particular business and I actually think that competition is healthy in many ways. But there is certainly a moral issue. This is something that affects both the employers and advertisers and more importantly, you, the teacher. Let me explain.

The reason a lot of schools choose to advertise on ajarn.com and remain loyal to us is because we are contactable. Either by e-mail or via our ajarn hotline number - we are contactable. It's our day job.

Very often - and I stress the words very often - a school will post a job ad and realise that they have made a mistake. There might be a problem with the job description itself or worse still, the school hasn't chosen the correct salary band. These mistakes are often not discovered until two or three days after the job ad goes on-line. What happens then is that the school will contact me to correct the job ad. And I can usually put a job ad right within an hour. As I said before - it's our day job.

But what about the TEFL website who copies and pastes the job ad from ajarn.com to put on their own site? Well, there are now two job ads for the same school in circulation - the correct edited version (which is showing on ajarn.com), and the incorrect version (which is showing on other sites) Advertisers have no idea where their job ad now appears - other than ajarn.com - and indeed why should they? To their knowledge, they have only posted the job on ajarn.com and if there is a problem, it's ajarn.com who has to put it right.

Ajarn.com only posts job ads that are sent to it directly. We have never ever taken job ads from other sites. The thought of getting involved in such hanky panky has never even crossed my mind.

So here are a few of the problems that this all creates

Firstly, I receive e-mails such as the one at the beginning of this comment. One employer is angry because their incorrect job ad is now appearing on other sites. Teachers are applying for the position and suddenly there's a whole lot of confusion. The employer checks the job post on ajarn.com - sees that everything is OK (because I made the changes) - and is now even more confused. They are saying "where are teachers seeing the job ad? I only posted it on one website"

As a teacher you are probably thinking "what's the problem? What's wrong with having a hundred Thailand TEFL sites all offering me jobs?" And I would agree with you to a certain extent. But it has to be a level playing field. Sites should only post jobs that are sent to them directly. And those sites need to be contactable if the employer realises that there are serious errors in their original job ad.

Here's the real danger - and I can see this beginning to happen already. Schools are becoming more wary of posting jobs on-line because they can do without the headache of teachers applying for jobs from incorrect, unamended job ads. It's causing schools too many problems. So what I believe could happen is that more and more schools will choose to try and fill their vacancies by word of mouth or other means - and avoid the hassles of what can happen when they post a job online.

So as a teacher looking for work, you won't get to see the job ad anywhere. And that can't be a good thing.

Anyway, I've said my piece. I'm sure you will draw your own conclusions.