24 Nov 2025 · 4 min
John Jonas on hiring Filipino virtual assistants: distrust runs both ways, with workers fearing nonpayment and employers worried about scams. He cites a Manila Bulletin report on cybercriminals targeting job seekers and offers a hiring checklist at 1vaoa.com to screen for trustworthy candidates.
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 249, trusting someone you don't know. So one of the questions I get asked the most is, how do I know if I can trust them? It's so common, and I get it. Like, we're hardwired not to trust things that are different. If it's unfamiliar or different, then why should we trust it? And especially bringing someone into your business who lives halfway around the world, like, they're trying to steal everything from you, Right? So what most of us don't understand and what I've come to realize is in the Philippines, this mistrust or distrust runs both directions. So you don't trust this person you're hiring, and they don't trust you either. And actually, they have that same feeling as you, but their feeling is stronger than yours is typically. So they don't know if they can trust you not to be a scammer. They don't know if they can trust you to pay them. They don't know if they can trust you to actually do what you've said you're gonna do, or to keep them employed or to not yell at them or to not make them feel stupid, which are all really big fears in the Philippines. So recently, one of my team members sent me an article in the Manila Bulletin, which the headline is, cyber criminals continue preying on Filipino job seekers. And, like, this is like, it's part of their culture. They know that when you go online to look for work, you're taking a chance of getting yourself scammed and ripped off. So for them, taking on a job is often a leap of faith for them. Now, in my last episode, I talked about someone whose only option was to either leave his family and go to Manila or to find an online job. So for him, there's just not a lot of option. But still, in my communication with him, he was distrusting of this employer. So for them, it's really a leap of faith. Like, they're choosing to commit all of their time to a single job with someone they don't know and someone who's overseas and someone who could easily just have them do a bunch of work and not pay them. And that time that they're committing is time they could have spent working somewhere else. I mean, he could have gone to Manila and gotten a job, probably. Or time that he could have spent looking for a job elsewhere or. Or doing his own thing or. I mean, There's a bunch of other options. In the end, working online is a really compelling option, but they don't trust you. For you, the worst thing that can happen is you don't hire someone because you don't trust them to bring them into your business. And so your business kind of stagnates. You're not growing, you're not doing what you need to grow your business for them. That distrust means either I take this distrust and I get over it because I have to feed my family, or we don't eat, which was the actual situation of the person I talked about in the last episode. They were really close to not eating. So all of this is why I typically tell people that you need to take steps to gain the trust of the person that you're hiring. And then you want to find someone trustworthy also. And you're going to see things that they do that will gain your trust in them. But typically the stakes are higher for them in working for you than the stakes are for you in hiring them. And as I say this, my hope is that you'll say, okay, I can trust this person a little bit more just by understanding their situation and their fear of trusting me. I should probably do some things to gain their trust. And if they weren't going to be completely honest, maybe the fact that I'm doing things to gain their trust in me will change their hearts a little bit towards being more honest with me. But the reality is, very rarely do I see the workers are dishonest. And in fact, to be completely honest with you, I mean, we've had hundreds of thousands of people get jobs through onlinejobs physical. We deal with way more crappy employers than we do with dishonest workers. Filipinos, generally on onlinejobs ph are trustworthy, but you won't know that until you try it for yourself. If you want my help in finding someone trustworthy, the way that I make sure that someone I'm hiring is trustworthy, I lay it out@1vaoa.com. It is my steps towards hiring a trustworthy, honest, hard working, talented ofs. Basically every time I do it. Sam.
