Berlitz Reviews

Pros

Flexible working time. Good students. Nice coworkers. Good material. It was a great time. It is a fun place to work.

Cons

The competitors pay better. Furthermore, the competitors allow their teachers to structure and plan their lessons themselves. They are not very flexible.

Pros

ability to instruct top business and executives in the area

Cons

moody and rude manager
frequent "punishing" instructors by limiting teaching hours
Berlitz expects a lot from you but gives you next to nothing in return

Advice to Senior Management

change it

Pros

Work hours are very flexible and taking time off is not a problem. It's easy to schedule a vacation with relatively little time in advance (2 weeks or so).

You get paid per class, so when you get classes, the pay is relatively good compared to other places in Bucharest and Romania.

Your fellow teachers are friendly and helpful. The atmosphere between colleagues is relaxed and non-competitive.

You get to see the city (could be a con for some people) - classes are sometimes held at a company's office, so you travel to the company to teach the class. This is a nice way to get to know Bucharest.

Teaching at Berlitz requires little to no previous experience - it's essentially "paint-by-number" teaching.

Brand name recognition - when you say, "I work for Berlitz," people have heard of the name and are impressed. It would probably look good on a resume...?

Cons

The main negative is the management, which in turn, affects everything.

The atmosphere in the office is tense due to internal management conflicts (which are made public through unprofessional gossiping and venting).

The training is extremely poor and sometimes nonexistent. There is an extensive (unpaid), week-long training which is essentially a printed out power point from the Berlitz headquarters. Children's classes can be very challenging and a number of teachers received no training for these.

Although the pay is good, actually receiving the money is not always guaranteed. They often "forget" classes. Also the reimbursements for travel are sometimes not paid in full or paid very late. (You pay for the initial expense out of pocket.)

The schedules are very last minute (schedules for the following week are emailed Friday evenings). Although I was told to expect at least 10 classes per week (20 hours), on average I probably received about 5. Even with the decent pay, this was not enough to pay my bills.

General unprofessional behavior prevailed - teachers would receive classes based on favoritism; new teachers would be hired and not introduced to the others; teachers would all of a sudden stop receiving classes without knowing why or being informed that they no longer had a job; new teachers would be hired despite there not being enough classes for the existing teachers; material for students would not be prepared in time; classes would be cancelled last minute and although teachers are supposed to be reimbursed partially, sometimes the management decided it was a special case (i.e. the student is a friend of theirs) and the reimbursement would not be supplied.

Advice to Senior Management

Berlitz has a lot of positives and the model is a very good and effective one. This could be a great franchise, if only the management were more qualified and professional. The poor management is the cause of the "revolving door" for teachers, staff and clients.

Pros

Nice clients who want to learn the language. Nice co-workers. Decent pay per hour, when you get classes, and when management does their math right.

Cons

Incompetent, sneaky management. No hours. No benefits, including not even offering consultation for visas or legal work permits (you aren't exactly paid under the table, but you aren't exactly paid legally either).

Poor or nonexistent training. Management smokes in the building. Last-minute scheduling. Unprofessional behavior such as gossiping about and berating employees and other management in front of other employees.

As a female, I sometimes don't feel safe alone with some staff members.

Advice to Senior Management

Berlitz International needs to take a closer and more serious look at what is going on at Berlitz Bucharest. I would suggest contacting instructors directly, because otherwise evaluations go through the management and the information is either manipulated or made up. Also beware of money laundering. This could ruin Berlitz's worldwide reputation even more than reviews from employees like me already have.

Pros

Hard to think of any. Perhaps you could consider it as a good springboard for getting started and established in a foreign country. There's also a bunch of interesting people to work with among the teachers and some sales staff there. Good just for the beginning.

Cons

Very low pay. The management is really odd: they don't seem to have any sense of where they're going and what their core business is - not teaching foreign languages, it seems. They seem more interested in new designs of advertising flyers, posters, etc than in good level of teaching. A great deal of cronyism and the most bizarre and frantic search for teachers I've ever witnessed! Their teachers, who are not really their teachers, but some free-lancers, come and go as there isn't much to keep them there for too long.

Advice to Senior Management

They don't really take any.

Pros

interesting students and caring staff...which has nothing to do with the swarmy people within the corporation itself.

Cons

everything else. Corporate doesn't care about you--only profits, profits, profits. Their senior management have second-rate degrees (or ones that you can purchase online) and are all a bunch of pretenders. They could care less about education or building a positive work environment. They also have lousy attitudes and pretend to care.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire talented people instead of phonies who get their positions by kissing up to you. The employees see it and that's why the turnover is so high. Stop acting like nothing is wrong. There's a reason why so many good people come and go and the LIS' are desparate to find teachers.

Pros

Interesting students, nice teachers, good class rooms

Cons

A company with a very poor management. When they don't like a teacher, they will do anything to get rid of the teacher, including telling lies about the teacher so he/she will have bad reputation. There is no clear instruction when Berlitz requests you to do something, and after all you'll be blamed for its lacking of information and guidance. No performance feedback, and then the local manager/supervisor will talk bad behind your back if you don't meet their satisfaction. Any changes is informed verbally and not written, this cause confusion and problems in the future.

Advice to Senior Management

Some Berlitz branches are not following the head office standard operation procedure. The Head Office should reevaluate those branches because their bad performance will affect Berlitz's name in the world.

Pros

Local co-workers in your center.
Interesting students and instructors.
Training is okay for those with VERY little experience.
Benefits.
Lots of time off.
Multicultural environment.

Cons

Management is constantly changing, either by getting fired or leaving to do something else.
Lack of gender diversity.
Cronyism prevails.
Little opportunity for career advancement unless you devote your life to the company for very little pay to compensate the effort. (Some people are okay with this, so if you're one of these, you'll be happy here)
Management seems to only be vested only in their career and self-preservation.
Lack of innovative ideas from management.
Decentralized operations that hurt because strategies are often miscommunicated, lag, or mismatch a center's capabilities.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep managers on for more than a year or two to get some momentum going with your strategies. Berlitz offers good programs that are getting lost due to lack of commitment from you. Good luck.

Pros

social cohesion between colleagues below you

Cons

poor and difficult intra-communication, often miscommunication
rigorous stubborn management barely open to any innovation not even discussion about other ideas
few empathy, not taking into account very heavy workload

Advice to Senior Management

communication between floors, rigourousness, poor empathy and situational leadership

Pros

Flexible hours and convenient locations

Cons

Very little communication from upper management