JoyTalk Reviews

I worked at JoyTalk

Pros – The people in the main office are good and supportive, if sometimes a bit disorganized.
With the right attitude, the job can be fun for a few years.
Once you've been placed at a school, JoyTalk pretty much leaves you alone except for a 2-3 training days per year.

Cons – Compensation isn't great. Especially when compared to JET.
There is no room for advancement beyond Assistant Language Teacher. It's the same for all ALT placement companies, though.

Advice to Senior Management – I don't really have any major complaints.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at JoyTalk

Pros – *Easily hired if you have a college degree. Great way to start your future in Japan.
*To interview all you need is Skype and some free time.
*Once placed in your schools and you're settled, you're left alone unless you need them. No micro-managing.
*The staff is friendly.
*You can chose between a 6 month or 1 year contract.
*They can support your work visa for up to a year.

Cons – *Only five days of paid vacation. After that, 10,000 yen is taken away per day you're absent.
*Pay is usually cheap, about 200,000 yen a month. Not a lot to try to save money. I'm literally living pay check to pay check. The Board of Edu likes to pay for the lowest bidder, and I think JoyTalk is good at that. But most private ALT dispatcher pay a lot less than JET. The same job for less money but a higher turnover rate and hiring rate? (I hear the BOE is reducing JETs because they're too expensive)
*No benefits. No health insurance, no holiday bonuses, no financial support besides your paycheck. Interac will give you a loan when you're first settling. JoyTalk won't.
*No room for advancement in the company. If you stay for 3 years teaching, you might be able to become an ALT manager. But the pay isn't that much different. There's nothing much after that.
*Only 5000 yen a month given for transportation. With gas at 130 yen a liter on a 35 L tank.... I'm definitely using more money than that.
*If you ask for a furnished apartment, you're sent to a small Leo Palace room that's over priced compared to the other apartments available. They don't tell you what your rent will be, where you'll live or what kind of apartment it is. Also your rent is averaged out with all the other ALT Leo Palace tenants, so you might be paying more/less than you need to. Moving out from a Leo Palace is a pain, more money to end the contract taken out from 2-3 months of your paycheck.
*The yellow plate cars, if you're given one, have no airbags, very low horsepower, pretty much a tin can on wheels. Most likely you'll die if you're in an accident. Get the white plate, full sized one instead.
*Though the staff is friendly, they're pretty disorganized. You can tell when you arrive at your town that everything is being done last minute. There doesn't seem to be any planning that was done ahead of time. None of the new ALTs had any idea what was going on when they were being placed. The staff can be hard to get a hold of too. Sending an email isn't enough. Sometimes you have to call them and still you might not get called back.
*Training used to be horrible. They would talk more about team work than actual teaching techniques. Recently it's improved. But the reality is that with the combination of the bureaucracy Japan's educational system follows and the low rank (lowest of them all) an ALT holds within the schools doesn't allow much of the theory learned at training to be put into practice. English is seen mostly as an extracurricular activity for elem and something necessary to pass a test in middle school.
*For some reason, the ALT isn't allowed to know how they're performing at work. They're not allowed to know how their teachers rate them.

Advice to Senior Management – I'm glad to see training improved compared to last year, but some things still haven't changed. ALTs could be given an incentive to stay if you gave bonuses for holidays, more towards transportation costs, a raise if they stay a year or more with you, and better communication skills to your employees. If you handled your new ALTs better by being more prepared for knowing where they'll live before they arrive, knowing what their rent will be, and not averaging out their Leo Palace rents (not fair for those who have to pay more than their real rent), you would seem less sketchy and much more professional. Basically many of us feel that you do things without notifying us first.