Ep. 157: My OFS Living In Cebu

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 157, My OFS in Cebu. So late last year, a typhoon hit Cebu and man, it was a disaster. Like it wrecked the city. It was one of the worst disasters I've seen in the Philippines in, you know, since I've been doing it. In 2005, it affected several of my OFS, one of whom is named Mark. He lives in Cebu. He actually moved out of Cebu after the typhoon because it was such a disaster. He moved back now. So let me just tell you a little bit about Cebu. Cebu is the second largest city and IT hub in the Philippines, both next to Metro Manila. A lot of people move there to gain experience working for tech and startup companies. A lot of companies set up shop there because of the availability of talent. And also it's quite a bit lower cost than Manila. So if you're looking for technical workers, chances are you're going to find a bunch of people in Cebu and they're talented and they're just lower cost than Manila. So. So I went and checked on Mark and I told him this was for my newsletter and for my podcast. I'm going to tell you some of what he had to say. So Mark is a. He's a web designer and front end developer at onlinejobs ph. He says originally he's from Negros Oriental, which is a neighboring island, but he lives permanently in Cordova, Cebu. He says he's mostly proud of the Cebu Cordova Link Expressway, which is a bridge that says it's 10 to 15 minutes away from where he lives. And hopefully we can get a picture of that bridge. In this video, Mark says, when I graduated, I moved to Cebu City to gain experience and hone my skills. But that would mean I would be away from my family. My story here in online jobs began after I decided to quit my office job and tried out working from home to be with my family. After resigning, I went on and registered at onlinejobs Ph, hoping to find my very first full time job online. And then one day, to my surprise, I received an email from John Jonas himself that the team needs a guy with my skillset. I went ahead and grabbed the opportunity. Since then, my life at work has never been this fun. So I mean, sometimes you don't know how skilled or talented someone is in this field. And when I hired Mark, that was the case. I didn't know, but he was the best. He was the as I recruited him. It looked like he was the best available person that I could find. And it turned out like Mark is super talented. I love the work that he does. So here's what he says about his work day. His work day for me starts in the afternoon. Since I'm a night owl and I have the freedom to work any time of the day. Advantage of working at home. After my afternoon snacks, I go straight to my office and cave there until my tasks are done. My time before and after work is always spent with my wife and my one year old mini me. So I asked Mark what it was like when he used to work in an office. Like what was it like? And he said, to be honest, I can't imagine myself ever going back to an office again. Too much travel time because of traffic. I would rather spend that time with family. So just so you know, you're listening to this. In the Philippines, it's not uncommon for people to have an hour commute or more to work there and back. And actually a two hour commute is not uncommon. I hear about it all the time. I mean, that's two to four hours a day in travel. Man, that is rough. Especially when you could be working from home and spending that time with your family, which I love that Mark does. So then I asked Mark about how are you guys doing after the typhoon last year? What's going on with your family? He says, last year, Typhoon Odette affected my work badly. After Odette hit, electricity, water, gas, basic needs, etc. Were very scarce. Hard to come by since electricity was forecasted to be fixed in three months, me and my family had to move back to our provinces, which he says Siquijor and Negros Oriental because they weren't hit as bad as Cebu. Just so I can resume work. Our house has minor damages as well. When the electricity and Internet was fixed here in our place, we immediately went back our area today I can say that has fully recovered from Odette's wreck. This is one of the. This is one of the really interesting things about the Philippines to me is, man, I don't know if you saw pictures or videos of it. Cebu was a disaster. I thought, I don't know how they ever recover from this. But a year later he says they're fully recovered. Such a big deal when it happened. I was so relieved to hear that he was safe first of all. And so we ended up sending money to help him fix his house and to help him travel to Negros and back. And you know, I mean, that's I hope it was helpful to him. That's how we kind of try and take care of our people. So Mark has been, I mean, just such an important part of our team. If you're putting off hiring, especially someone like this, because you don't know what to put in a in a job post, you don't know what to say, go check out my free job post templates. VA job posttemplates.com where we have, I think like 17 job post templates in different for different roles in a business. And the templates are laid out really well. They give you options. It's not a copy and paste thing, so you don't look like you're scamming workers by copying pasting your job was not the same as everybody else's. It's a good situation. Vajobposttemplates.com.