Vantaggi
(1) You can work remotely. (2) You can plan your lessons according to the student's needs. BiCortex doesn't have any guidelines on how you should plan your lesson.
Svantaggi
(1) There are too many employees from BiCortex that are involved in the process of organizing a course. I usually got contacted by at least 3-4 people for one and the same course and I lost track of who I needed to reply to and who is responsible for answering questions. There were multiple changes in the course program that would at one point be addressed daily and when I talked to one of the 3-4 employees, they had no idea what I was talking about because there was apparently no communication within their own team. So, in the end, I really didn't know who could answer my questions and I was also lost. (2) If I didn't reply to their multiple emails and changes within 12 hours, they would send more emails and even call me on my private number. When I first started working for them, BiCortex needed references and I gave them the name and email address of my supervisor. She didn't answer within 24 hours and BiCortex sent another email to her and to me. My supervisor complained to me and said that she needed more time to write a reference and had other priorities at work and that she planned to write my reference the next day, but BiCortex already sent another email. It was a bit embarrassing for me as I didn't want to burden my supervisor with even more stress. Basically, BiCortex believes that the world revolves around them and that no one has any other responsibilities. Mind you, they contacted me via LinkedIn because they were in need of someone immediately. (3) I had two courses that were chaotic. The students were unresponsive and unreliable. When talking to the course coordinator and informing them about the situation, they didn't do a lot, but just pointed out that I can't say that I'm from BiCortex and that I have to mention another school, etc. So, total confusion and too many rules for each new course. I'm here to teach as a freelancer and as they stated in their contract, they owe me nothing, so why should I learn about each new policy and rule? I'm here to support the student's success and work with the student. (4) They have lots of policies that you have to follow, but then state in the contract that you basically have no rights and that they owe you nothing. And they suddenly bring out new policies when you have an issue that you've never seen. It seems very profit-oriented and not teacher-oriented. (5) When talking about the salary, they weren't happy that I wanted 30 US dollars an hour (I have a Master's degree and have been a language teacher for more than 5 years) and informed me that if I want to collaborate with them in the future, I would need to rethink my hourly rate (going down with the price), so again profit-oriented.