Short YouTube advice clip by John Jonas offering a quick screening heuristic to estimate English proficiency of Filipino virtual assistants: ask what TV shows they watched growing up and whether they watched the English or Tagalized (Tagalog-dubbed) versions. The speaker claims those who watched English versions (e.g., Sesame Street, Dora) are likelier to have stronger English. The video closes with a plug for his book The Outsourcing Lever and a free download URL.
Chapters
Determining an OFS English skills with a single question. Hey, my name is John Jonas, and today I'm going to talk about how you can know if an OFS or a va, a virtual assistant, has good English with a single question. So years ago, I was talking with one of my VAs. At the time, she was a VA. Today, she's really, really skilled, and I would call her an online Filipino special. And she was saying, you know, there's an easier way to figure out someone's English than the way that you're doing it. What if you ask someone whether they grew up watching Sesame street or Baddie Bot? And that was super interesting to me. So she said, yeah, everybody grew up watching one of the two. If they grew up watching Sesame street, then, you know, their English is really good because they grew up with English. If they grew up with Baddie Bot, which is the tagalized version of Sesame street, then their English may not be as good. It might be really good, but you don't. You just don't know. So today that question doesn't work as well anymore, but you can ask other questions. So the question is, what did you grow up watching on tv? And they're probably going to tell you the same things that maybe you grew up watching. Like, depending on their age, they grew up watching Dora the Explorer, or they maybe grew up watching Sesame street, or maybe they grew up watching Power Rangers, something like that. They grew up watching American tv. And the next question is, did you watch the English version of it, or did you watch the Tagalyzed version of it? Like, what was on in your house growing up? So if they watch the English version of it, you'll probably notice their English is better than other people's. If they grew up watching the tagalyzed version of it, which is what they call it in the Philippines. The language is Tagalog. Well, it's kind of Tagalog, and they call it Tagalized when they change English into their native language. If they grew up with the Tagalized version of it, their English may not be as good. And so this question is a really good way to determine right up front, how good is their English likely to be? My name is John Jonas, and I wrote a book all about hiring people in the Philippines to help grow your business. It's titled the Outsourcing Lever, and it's available free@outroundinglever.com.
