Institute Review
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Anyone who admits to being black or brown on the telephone will not even get an interview with Wall Street English. If you have an Arabic, Urdu, or African name, change it to "Steingold" or "Lewis" on your resume to get a demo class scheduled. They only hire white native English speakers and this is ironic because the boss who screens the applicants is a Latino American named Carlos Cortes! When I applied for a job there about 8 months ago the Chinese girl I spoke with on the phone, said she could not make an appointment for me to come give a demo class because my last name ended with an "o". I asked her what that meant and she said "That means you are either Italian or Spanish right?" I said "No that means my grandf*ther is from Argentina and I am a native English speaker from America - where I was born and raised as a U.S. citizen!" She seemed confused and asked me to send in a photograph. After I did so, I never heard back from her, so I called her after a week and asked for an update. She was very honest with me and just said "My boss said you don't look enough like an American and we only hire teachers that fit a certain look." When I asked who her boss was she said Mr. Cortes and after I said I wanted to send him a letter, I got the full name.
I decided I would try to impress this Carlos dude with my 6 years teaching experience and my linguistics degree from UCLA, and a little Mandarin that I speak at HSK level 3. The guy would not even take my calls for a week! Finally I called after hours and got him on the line and gave him a rundown of my qualifications. Although he was polite he was not ashamed to say that "We have a policy to hire native English speakers from certain countries and they must have a certain professional look". When I asked him about this look he asked me how long I have lived in China, and when I told him "a few years" he frankly said "You know how the Chinese are... they only want white teachers and even though you are an American, they will never believe it because of your tan skin color." Not wanting to argue or b*o* a fuse on this guy, I just said I understood and said goodbye. Today, I saw the below posted at an expat forum:
"Anyone of color, including Latin Americans need not apply at Wall Street English because they have a very sneaky way of hiring only white people these days. No matter how qualified you may be with education degrees, teaching experience, and TEFL certificates, if you are not a white American, Canadian, Brit, or Aussie they won't hire you and one of their HR managers, Carlos Cortes even says so verbally and in emails, in a clever round-about way. Carlos himself is Latino but advises his staff not to hire Latino Americans. I have the proof and will be posting it on Weibo and here at Beijinger if he does not publicly apologize for his blatant job discrimination. Yeah, we know this is China Carlos, but YOU are an American citizen violating equal rights laws! Go ahead and deny it Carlos - I dare you. I recorded one of your former HR employees saying that you told her and others in the HR office "We only want white native English speakers." Does that ring any bells for you Carlos? Does Pearson CEO John Fallon approve of this white policy or is he the one who ordered it? d*m*, this Fallon guy sure is white!"
http://www.th*b*ijinger.com/forum/2015/03/23/boycott-wall-street-english-protest-their-racism
FYI:Â Wall Street English is owned by a public company called Pearson-Longman trading on the NYSE under the ticker symbol of PSO
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The pros
This presents a wonderful opportunity for a class-action law suit back in America!
The cons
Reveals the reality of racism in China.
Advice to Management
Throw away your white sheet and hood mentality and stop the hiring discrimination
Institution Location
Based in the U.S. but the China operations are supervised by Austrailia Office