My Experience Working with ALTIA Central

Recently, I had a few people reach out to me via reddit about comments I had posted regarding ALTIA Central. I figure it's because it's peak job hunting season for the spring intake of ALTs, so with that said... I want to take some time here today to write about it for others who may be curious about this dispatch company.

I figured that I've been out of this company long enough to not be recognized by current employees, there's not that much information on them, and it's been awhile since I blogged on ALT life.

And since I started a review series of LCCs, seems fitting to start reviewing ALT Dispatch Companies too I guess. /shrugs

I assume you're here because you know who they are and what they do, so I won't get into it. If you want to know about Teaching in Japan, I have a whole other blog post here that I suggest you read. I'll dip a bit into the interview process, but I feel like it's a pretty generic Interview so there's not much to talk about. I also did mine in Japan, so I'm sure the process is less laborious than doing the interview overseas. So I will focus in part my experience on the job & with the company.

If you have any other questions afterwards, please give me a shout via my social handles. I'm very active on twitter & instagram, and I'd be happy to answer some specific questions.

To Start...

In an attempt to keep myself semi-anonymous, I won't reveal exact timelines of when I worked and where exactly my placements were. All I will say is that I worked for them more than 5 years ago (so do keep in mind that my experience may be dated & inaccurate to the current status of the company).

As for location. Although the majority of their placements are in Aichi, I was one of their first few folks working in Osaka Prefecture for them.

And I worked for ALTIA Central for 2 years, just so anyone is wondering as well.

(If you were a higher up in the ALTIA chain reading this, hello! It'll be like a guessing game for you - ain't that fun?)

Interviewing with ALTIA

Like I said, I interviewed in Japan after finishing a contract here.

The process was pretty straightforward. I submitted my resume & cover letter via email upon finding their job posting. They invited me to their Osaka Branch Office for an interview, and after a week or so, I received an email that they were interest to hire me. The rest was history.

Before the interview, I was told I needed to submit a lesson plan on a topic of their choosing. They emailed me the information when they invited me to the interview and I submitted my lesson plan within the week.

During the interview (which was super chill and more informal than not), they went through the lesson plan with me. Not in detail, but for parts that needed some clarification. They asked questions basically asking me to justify why I did the activities or plans the way I did. There was no demo lesson and I was not asked to do one on the spot.

After that, because I had indicated that I can speak SOME Japanese, they tested my Japanese with one of their Japanese staff members. If you can speak conversationally, this will be a breeze. If you don't... well, then don't lie about your Japanese ability.

The Other ALTs

Once you're hired, you will be asked to attend their orientation session. Every new hire regardless if you have experience as an ALT or not MUST attend this several-day-long orientation session. They were held in Nagoya if I remember correctly (or maybe this was the PD Day session... hmmm) when I worked for them, and I was full reimbursed for my Shinkansen from Osaka. My hotel room was also fully paid for.

You will meet all the other "new ALTs" here.

Obviously, they won't all be working in the same area as you, but compared to my previous experience of Orientations - ALTIA really had it packed down. It was helpful, insightful and overall mostly just a networking workshop baked into one. More on that later, but I just want to say that you will VERY LIKELY be meeting a lot of experienced ALTs here.

In the past anyway, ALTIA mostly hired from within the country. So most people aren't just fresh out of college, and doesn't have their mind completely hardwired on partying, drinking and fucking girls/guys every weekend. I met mostly people who had at least 2 or 3 years experience on their belt (I had only one year at the time so essentially I was the baby here), married and generally older folks.

Compared to all the ALT drama I experienced at my previous job where everyone was essentially "fresh off the boat", one-upping each other and trying to prove themselves worthy to literally no one - I never encountered any ALT drama during my time here at ALTIA. Everyone was friendly, minded their own business but was also willing to hand off their ALT wisdom if you asked the right questions. I really had a good time in this regard.

The Orientation

I met one overseas new hire during my orientation, and I was told they had to do one extra day of orientation (like a pre-orientation). Everyone else had to be there are 3 days, if I recall.

One of the bad things about this orientation is its focus on teaching Elementary School (ES) students. Problem was, a good number of us only had Junior High School placements. So while they do try very hard to make workshops on teaching more general, I still felt that there was a huge focus on Elementary School (ES).

Each ALT gets a set of materials that will be sent to their home via delivery services.

Yep, there's A LOT of materials that ALTIA lends you to help you with your job. A box full of flashcards, digital storybooks that supplement the elementary school textbooks and CDs with songs (also for ES)

I also did not meet anyone there who did not know which city they were going to be working in. I can't recall if we knew exactly which grade levels and which school(s) we taught at, but I did meet a group of people who were still definitely working out how to divide up the area of their city...? I'm not quite sure. But at the orientation, I didn't ever felt worried I would have no job since I knew I had a placement and we were at that point, well acquainted with our supervisors.

Yes, each area has a "supervisor" (who are or were ALTs at some point) that manages you. Each supervisor has multiple areas they look after, so he/she might be working with several groups of ALTs and getting them settled in. Along with supervisors, there was also a General Manager (who are Japanese). Supervisors worked under the General Managers, and the General Managers are the ones who takes care of things with the Japanese public schools. They negotiated the contracts with BOEs, and basically do all the things that need to be done in Japanese.

I will tell you now: Your experience at ALTIA is largely impacted by who your General Manager and Supervisors are.

Supervisors & General Managers

As I mentioned already, each Supervisor is in charge of several cities of ALTs. General Managers have a similar role, but they work with the Japanese school. In short, you will see your Supervisors much more than your General Managers.

The only time I ever interact with my General Managers is when we need to go to a new school to greet the staff, teachers and principal.

Your Supervisors are your direct line of contact for work-related issues. If you need to take a day off, or need to excuse yourself from school due to emergency, you need to contact your Supervisor. If your Supervisor if busy, you reach a Supervisor - any Supervisor. If you have problems at the school - for example, a trouble class or trouble with a teacher - you are encouraged to reach your Supervisor for advice. If the trouble does escalate, or if you simply have any personal problems at your school, your Supervisor will be the one coming to your school to visit & chat with you in person.

During my time with ALTIA, I had really kickass Supervisors and a General Manager who really knew how to work the gears of the school to keep everything peaceful & drama-free.

I always felt like my Supervisors were working with me, not against me. When I had some trouble in my personal life, my Supervisor worked with my General Manager to ask the school to excuse me from work. I still needed to justify why I need the day off, which was quite a process... but I was never denied a day off. I felt that I was being trusted, and everyone I worked for genuinely cared for my health over my work.

I did hear that some ALTs in a different city had a Supervisor who was generally difficult. This Supervisor always asked a lot of questions about why that ALT needed that day off, and while it was always approved, the ALTs under this Supervisor had more negative experiences due to this.

In short, I definitely got lucky here. And I think this review of ALTIA would be miles different if I had different Supervisors and General Managers.

Additional Tasks & Events

Being an ALTIA ALT, you are expected to attend the following:

1. PD Day (mandatory)
2. ALT Observation Day(s) (quite mandatory)
3. Summer Camps/ Other Events (volunteer; highly recommended)

PD Day is where all ALTs need to attend mandatory workshops. This will 100% happen on a weekend, and you need to attend them. They usually offer two session on two different weeks, notified by email farrrrr in advance. There is literally no excuse for you to not show up.

Yes, they are quite dull... but it's sort of a good excuse to hang out with some of your ALT friends here and bring up any grief you have with your school to your Supervisor. So there's that!

One thing I quite enjoyed during my time at ALTIA is the "ALT Observation Days". They are a bit annoying for the ALT being observed, and it is a bit of a hassle to have to leave your school to go to that ALT's school, but generally I valued the discussions I had with my fellow ALTs and Supervisors. A good Supervisor will tell you that this is NOT an evaluation of your abilities as a teacher. Your Supervisors are going down a checklist to make sure you are being effective, and checking to see if you are using some techniques that ALTIA Central teaches - but you aren't graded to be used against you in the future!

The checklist and the "evaluation" is only for discussion purposes.

After the ALT finishes the lessons, all the ALTs come together to talk about that ALT's class. What they did well, what they can improve on and what are things we noticed in the classroom that might be helpful to talk about (to help other ALTs with their classrooms).

I generally liked these discussions, and everyone often have some interesting insight due to their different experiences. I came from a previous job where these Observation Days were basically "I am here to judge your abilities, and grade you base on only that one class and nothing else" type of thing - so it was really refreshing to see this take on Observation Days.

Again, I suppose this is a situation that might be soured if you have some assh*le ALTs and a bad Supervisor... but, this wasn't my experience at all.

Your Board of Education (BOE) may sometimes want to run English Camps during the summer, or a Recitation Contest, or they may have an English Interview Test they want to conduct and need some ALTs to run those interviews. These are all work outside of your contract, and your Supervisor will generally ask you to volunteer your time for these extra events.

If you work in a big cities with several ALTs, you might not all need to go to these events. Your Supervisor may ask for volunteers, and you generally take turns taking on one or two of these events over the course of the year.

Now, if you're a one-man show... generally, it will be less voluntary. But if for any reason you cannot make it, your Supervisor will generally ask some nearby ALTs to help you out. These extra events were compensated by cash cards that we were able to use at Supermarkets, Convenience stores, etc. So it is paid volunteer work.

I highly recommend volunteering for these. Your eagerness CAN HELP you get first pick of schools next year if you re-contract with ALTIA.

Contacting the Staff/Supervisor

One thing I generally enjoy having the perk of working for dispatch company is having company staff who speaks both English and Japanese to explain & help you through some bureaucratic adulting. Like translating your city hall mail. Or visa renewals. Nowadays I work in a mostly Japanese environment so I'm kind of expected to do things on my own... (ah, adulting)

During ALTIA, I was always able to get a response within 48 hours by email if I needed to figure out what my city hall wants me to pay.

I did take quite a few days off from work. Contacting my Supervisor can be a hassle because as an ALT working for a dispatch company, we can't just contact the school directly to say we cannot come in. We need to call the Supervisor, the Supervisor calls the school and then the Supervisor calls you back to confirm it. Having this middle man just slows down the process. While I never had an issue where the Supervisor forgot to call the school, a fellow ALT friend did have this experience. The school ended up being quite chill about it afterwards, but this whole thing could have been avoided if ALTs called the school directly...

A problem in general with all dispatch work, I suppose.

It's also quite annoying during extreme weather warnings and god forbid, an earthquake. When there is a typhoon and school is cancelled, we often have to wait for Supervisors to call us back about our work for the day. I lived the closest to my city at the time, but the other ALTs in my city lived quite further. They would often run into train troubles. If school was cancelled in the end, it works out for everyone... but sometimes school is not cancelled and the ALT would still have to somehow get themselves to work during train delays and train cancellations.

Pay & Reimbursements

I'll be straight with you - I was paid less than 200k a month after taxes. It sucked.

(your contract may pay more because there are different types of contracts)

But it was for a trade off. I had LOTS of days off, which makes finding extra work easy. It allowed me lots of time to travel as well. Working with this base salary was okay for one or two years. But this salary is impossible without another part time job. Especially if you ever run into health emergencies and other type of emergencies that require money to solve. You would have to live EXTREMELY frugally to be able to save any money with just this salary alone. I was quite frugal, and still struggled by my second year with no other part-time supplements.

You are allowed to work part-time elsewhere. ALTIA has no restrictions on this. You just need to make sure you get approval from immigrations, so it has nothing to do with ALTIA.

The good thing is, they do pay every month THE SAME SALARY.

There are no prorated days. Even if you only worked one week in March, you still get your base amount.

When I worked at ALTIA, there were no limits to transportation reimbursements. To my knowledge from friends who still works at ALTIA, they told me that reimbursements are now capped monthly.

ALTIA does gives small allowance to ALT for any year-end celebrations you end up going to with your school. If you get invited by your school to go to their year-end party, and the school asks you to pay out of your pocket, you can ask your school for a receipt to get them reimbursed by ALTIA up until 8000 yen.

Final Comments

Overall, I really had a good experience with ALTIA Central when I worked for them.

My number one thing with them is that they were always very transparent with me. On their website, they list where all their positions are and whether they are available or not. You know exactly what you are getting into, and if it's not what you want, they tell you upfront and you can still sort of know what else they have in store for you.

However, to my understanding - quite a few things have changed. Staffing changes, pay rate changes, etc etc. It is very possible that your experience will be VERY DIFFERENT from mine. So please take whatever I experienced or heard with a grain of salt.

I still hope this helps someone out though, so let me know in the comments or in my socials if you have any questions regarding the company.