Pros
1. Flexible work hours - You can plot your own schedules to your own preference, which the TM will plot for you. Although it is important to note that you need to make sure that the schedules that you give, you will be online and on-the-go for sudden bookings. If not, you will end up having massive deductions to your current salary AKA your hard work. 2. Salary is okay for a part-time/"quarantine" job - I get 103/hr, higher than most rates. This is maybe due to the fact I am a bachelor's degree holder + did okay in my final demo. I usually work 5--6 hours a day which gives me around 500-600pesos/day salary. Not bad for an at-home job to be honest. My first two weeks of working, I earned around 3550 pesos. 3. Hiring process was fast - literally took me 2 days to get the offer. Process depends though on your qualifications -- the usual process is 1. Application submission 2. Initial Interview 3. Pre-demo training 4. Pre final demo 5. Final demo. But I was able to skip the pre final demo, maybe due to my Bachelor's degree and credentials. 4. Meeting students - Some students are really sweet and really a pleasure to get to know. They share things about their culture and their lives, things I would not have known if it weren't for teaching them. A few students became my regulars too, whom I've gotten to know quite well. Some I even consider as my new friends. But overall, good students are hit-or-miss.
Cons
1. TM is hard to reach/understand - I understand that they are busy, that is why they take long to reply. Sometimes though, if a concern is urgent and TM is not able to reply, the teacher will take the fault or penalty for that. I'm blessed that my TM is kind and not one of "those" TMs you see on other reviews, but despite that, she also takes hours or even days to reply. She said that she has over 300 tutors under her care, which leaves me wondering about the TM to tutor ratio. Acadsoc should really hire more TMs if that's the case. The hiring process was SO fast, but the actual acceptance process took me 2 weeks. I had to take the TESOL test, then some other trainings in the website before I could even start teaching. 2. Students can book a minute before an unbooked class - It is a hassle to keep refreshing and refreshing a slot you thought was "unbooked" to be booked at literally the last minute. Can be booked a minute before. Stressful to say the least. 3. Some students are rude - This is just pure luck. I get good students, I get bad ones too. The adults are usually fine, they are polite and overall OK to teach. I actually prefer adults more because they are tame. The children though, you have to kind of get a feel for them first -- some don't listen, some are distracted, some cry until the lesson is over, some don't want to be there. It is your own effort to find a way to catch their attention. You can play games, watch videos, or do small talk to gain their attention and boost interest. 3. Bad reviews - bad reviews automatically gain you -10 points each (points are the lifeblood of an ESL teacher that wants to climb up the salary ladder). In my case, I've gotten 3 bad reviews, which gave me -30 points (mind you, each class is only around 0.3 points). Just beware, some students (or even the parents of the students) who give 1-star, Acadsoc automatically translate the stars into these complaints in the system. No tip for this but to know your student well and their expectations from you. Learned this the hard way. Do your best for each student. 4. Website material is very confusing (and grammar-wise, not the best) - The interface of the Acadsoc tutor website is just awful. Hard to navigate and just a nightmare sometimes, easily susceptible to bugs in the system. The training courses that the tutors need to take before teaching also have wrong grammar in them. This is kind of unprofessional in my opinion, Acadsoc is a company that facilitates the learning of the English language, which in turn should be reflected in their own material that they give out. Kind of embarrassing, if you ask me. To add to this, employee comprehension and basic sentence construction needs a bit of improvement too.