24 Nov 2025 · 5 min
John Jonas argues for keeping Online Filipino Specialist hiring simple: post a basic job ad on onlinejobs.ph, ask a few screening questions about experience and equipment, give a short test, then iterate. He says you can add complexity like taxes and benefits later.
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 226, why I try to make it really easy to hire an ofs. I really like simplicity in life, and I try and make things simple in most aspects of my life. So if you're watching this on YouTube or if you've watched any of my videos before or seen me on a webinar or whatever, you'll probably notice that I. I only wear plain colored shirts. Whether it be short sleeve or long sleeve. I only wear plain color shirts. No logos, no nothing. And typically they're always the same brand shirt. Because it's just simpler. When I find something that fits me, then I don't want to deal with doing something else. It's simple, it works, it's easy. I love it. And I've been doing this since long before Zuckerberg had his. Had his gray sweatshirts or whatever he does. And the simplicity and efficiency of it are important to me. And it's important in also hiring ofs. Simplicity and efficiency. So a lot of you, when you first get started, you have all these questions swirling around what about taxes or benefits or paid time off or holidays or different culture or the contract or all these different things that you're worried about that's like preventing you from hiring someone in the Philippines. And at first glance, it seems complicated. I hope that the more you pay attention, the simpler this gets. Because really it's very, very simple to start out. And then the more you do it, the more you can add the complexities, but none of the complexities need to be there when you start. So what I find is a lot of people want to focus on all of the complexities and, and they want to solve all those things. And so they keep finding ways to not hire someone because there's. Well, what about taxes? Well, I'm not really sure about taxes. So let me go talk to this person and that person. And then you don't talk to those people and then I'm still not. And what about insurance? Or there's all these things and that just means that you don't actually make progress. And progress is what brings growth and happiness and all the good things in life. There's always something to worry about. There's always something to be overwhelmed about. You're always going to be too busy to do this. But if you try and keep it simple, it becomes really easy to hire someone. And here's what I always recommend to People, because it's so simple. If you go to onlinejobs ph and post a job, that job post doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to detail everything. It doesn't have to talk about all the tasks that they'll be doing. It doesn't have to talk about any benefits you're gonna give them. Just make it super duper simple. Here's the role I'm trying to hire for. I'm trying to hire a social media manager. I would like you to make posts and create content and that's about it. Or just this last week I contacted a bunch of people and said, hey, I'm looking for someone to do some machine learning. Here's the kind of data that we have. Here's what I want to do with it. Are you interested? And it was really, really simple. And I contacted like 10 people and I heard back from about five of them and today I hired one of them for you. Just posting that job and the simplicity of it will get the ball rolling because once you post the job, you're going to start to get applicants and you're going to start to see, oh wow, this person's really, really qualified. Oh, this person isn't qualified. Just don't reply to them. Super, super simple. This person who is qualified. Let me ask you a few questions. Well, what kind of questions? Like what experience do you have? Can you write me a paragraph about yourself? Where do you live in the Philippines? What's your computer like? Really, really simple. And the more you do this, the more you'll see about them. And it's super easy to get a really good idea of if is this person the one you want to hire or not. All of this I cover at 1vaoa. My goal with 1vaoa was to make hiring as simple as possible for you. So you know exactly what to do, when to do it, what questions to ask, how to give a test to people, how to pick the right person, what to negotiate with them. It's all really, really simple. If you know what you're doing with it, are you still going to make mistakes? Yeah, probably, Maybe, maybe not. But are they fixable? Yes. In the end, the only thing that really matters is progress. And just posting your job pushes progress along. And now you're that much closer to getting work off of your plate, to getting help in your business, to finding this amazing talent pool of people that you can super easily hire from over and over and over again. When I went to find someone for machine learning, it wasn't like, oh, I don't know how to find someone for machine learning, which is like a really, really technical skill. I went to onlinejobs ph I searched machine learning. I got a whole bunch of profiles. A few of those profiles were like super, super highly skilled people that have tons of experience working for really big companies doing this. And it was really easy to contact them and to hire them. So if you're over complicating this, it can be really simple. Onlinejobs ph Post a job, start interviewing. Once you post the job, the ball gets rolling and it's really easy to keep it rolling for you. And it doesn't have to take a long time to hire someone. It can be really fast. Use my 1vaoa.com process for finding great people.
