24 Nov 2025 · 4 min
John Jonas explains why OnlineJobs.ph stayed in the Philippines instead of expanding globally. He argues Filipino workers have better hiring outcomes because of cultural traits like honesty, loyalty, and work ethic, and replicating the platform's supporting content and employer experience elsewhere would be too costly and difficult.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 241, why I haven't brought onlinejobs ph to other countries. So I get this from people all the time. Hey, John, you should create a job board like onlinejobs Ph in Brazil or in Nigeria or in Vietnam, whatever it is. I get a lot of requests from people to do this partly because they would like to hire someone who speaks Spanish. And so they want a job board for all Spanish speaking countries because they have this niche need or because they're from Vietnam and they're like, oh, there's a lot of people here who need work. And I always say, no, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that. Why? Well, because starting a job board is all about employers having a good experience. And if employers don't have a good experience or a better experience than somewhere else, why would they go there? Why would they come to that space specific country to hire someone? And so while yes, you can hire good people all over the world, you can hire a good person from just about any country, your chances are just a lot higher in the Philippines. And there's a specific set of cultural differences that makes this the case. Now, this isn't, it's not always the case, but usually your chances are just higher in the Philippines. And that's why I stick with the Philippines. So the cultural differences are that they're honest, they're loyal, they're hardworking, they're pleasing, they're not entrepreneurial, they're looking for long term work, they don't want to steal your stuff. It really is an amazing set of cultural things that makes the Philippines different than elsewhere in the world and generally better than elsewhere in the world. It also helps that they are super talented in the Philippines. There's so many people with really high skills and they're very, very westernized. So now obviously not everyone is like this in the Philippines, but generally this is what you're going to find. And yes, there are exceptions. So yeah, you might find someone great in India or Mexico or Brazil or Indonesia or Ghana or or wherever else that you want me to start a job board in, but your chances are usually just higher in the Philippines. If you're interested in knowing what other employers have to say about this, go check out ofstasks.com where I asked, I think 60 employers, what do your people in the Philippines do for you? And they responded and the responses were shocking. What people have invented and the talent levels that they're finding. Ofstasks.com okay, so let me add a PS to this. One of the reasons why OnlineJobs ph has worked so well is well, because employers have a really good experience, but also because I've created so much content around it. And to me, in an Internet business, and this is just some general business advice, I find content is king. Whatever business creates the most content is usually the one that's going to win in selling things. So in your business, whatever you're doing, if you can find a way to create content around your service or your product or whatever it is, the more times people will see that content, the more they want whatever it is that you're selling, and especially if what you're selling is really, really awesome, then that content makes a big difference. And so that's why Another reason why starting a job board in Mexico would be really difficult because there's a lot of stuff to talk about why the Philippines is so great. And I don't have that for Mexico or for Ghana or for Indonesia or whatever it is. Creating the content is really, really important. It educates, it teaches, it helps convince, it lets people know what solutions are out there. I just couldn't do that with another country. Not to mention the amount of work that it would require to redo what I've already.
