Host John Jonas introduces episode 328 of the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast, framing the episode as a life-story profile showing how remote work changes Filipino lives. The bulk of the content is a first-person account by Mary Ernestine Sison (an online Filipino specialist/credit analyst) describing childhood hardships (no running water), migration to Metro Manila, long commutes and graveyard shifts as a call center agent, family and financial pressures, discovering OnlineJobs.ph around 2013–2014, securing a remote role with a Utah-based credit repair company in 2014, and working remotely for nine years which allowed her to stay with family and improve their living conditions.
Questions this video answers
40 years old, married with four children.
Kawit, Cavite, Philippines.
She started in 2014 and has worked there for nine years (as of the interview).
Call center agent for a telecom company (graveyard shift).
She is a credit analyst / takes inbound calls, enters billing information, and orients customers; the company is a credit repair company based in Utah.
Chapters
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 328, the life struggles of one OFS. So I've often talked about how hiring people in the Philippines can be life changing for you. For Filipinos, giving them a job, working from home can be very life changing for them. And we feel like we should be highlighting people and their stories. So a few months ago I started this process of highlighting people's life stories in the Philippines. First video that we've created is from Mariah. And Mariah's story may sound incredible, but it's actually not super uncommon. She grew up where there wasn't running water, which growing up in the US seems inconceivable and it's not super common in the Philippines anymore either, but it still exists. And this is why so many people and conditions like that, not necessarily always no running water or no electricity, but this is why so many people move to big cities like Manila or Cebu. There are job opportunities there that just don't exist. There aren't jobs in some of the rural parts of the Philippines. And then they move to the big cities only to find, yeah, you can find a job, but you may have a two to three hour commute every day. Or maybe you don't find a job locally, but you are able to manage a job overseas, which for a long time has been the dream of people in the Philippines. As you get to go work in Singapore or in Dubai or in Indonesia or in Canada. And if you can go overseas and work, then you make enough money to send money home to your family in the Philippines. I don't think I could deal with that. I don't like being away from my family. But for many people this is the only option. There isn't, there isn't another option. And in the Philippines, a culture that puts family first. So when you take someone away from their family, it's emotionally and mentally painful, both for them and for the people they leave behind. So when you hire someone at onlinejobs pH, it's a real possibility that you just prevented that person from having to move overseas to get a job. You allow them to stay at home to take care of their family. So I'm gonna now play for you Mariah's story. If you're watching this on YouTube, well, you'll get the full video. Otherwise you'll get the audio of it on just on podcast. Hopefully this shows you that you're changing people's lives. When you hire someone, they're changing yours, you're changing theirs, and you're probably changing generations of lives of people in the Philippines when you hire them here. Let's get into it.
I grew up in a town with no running water. We had to wake up early every day at 4am to take a five minute walk to fetch water from a nearby river just to take a bath. For cooking, we would get water from a deep well. Despite the hardships, I'm usually an outgoing person. I love sharing happy memories with my friends and making them laugh. I graduated college and moved to the slums of Metro Manila with my then boyfriend who's now my husband. I endured everything without complaining since the rent there was low. Then I found work as a call center agent for a telco company. But I soon got pregnant with our eldest, Jared. We didn't have enough money so I gave birth to him at a charity ward. When Jared was about a year old, a strong typhoon came and our area got flooded. We had to move in with my parents in Cavite, a province two to three hours south of Metro Manila. And since then my daily commute to work became a struggle. Two to three hours one way every day. Life was hard. My husband was in training to become a seaman. I got pregnant and had twins. My schedule was usually graveyard shift. I'd come home in the morning and my husband would already be gone for the day. We barely saw each other. I also didn't have time to be there for our three kids. Sadly, it took a toll on my mental health and because I was responsible for all the bills and my husband couldn't work while training, I was really stressed then. It was around 2013. My co worker mentioned that there are platforms like Onlinejobs ph where you can find full time work and stay at home at the same time. That opened my eyes and I went all in. I quickly had the slowest DSL Internet line installed in our house. It was what we could afford and I got a custom PC built with the most basic specifications which was really laggy to use. When I found my first online job, I felt ecstatic. It was like a ray of sunlight that was directed at me. My first thought was I can finally pay the debts of pile. Through the years, the monthly salary they offered was five times that of my physical job. Within two weeks of getting this online job, I resigned from my call center job in Manila. I was able to work full time from home, be with my family and at the same time earn well to make ends meet. My job is with a credit repair company based in Utah and my role is to take inbound calls of people enrolling in our system, enter their billing information and orient them about our services, among many others. This started back in 2014. Now I've been with them for nine years and still going. And in those nine years a lot has changed in our family's life. Although managing my time is challenging, I can now take care of my kids at home when my husband is away at sea. Also, unlike before, I'm able to pay our bills on time and buy all our needs. On top of that, I can afford to give my kids some of their wants and give them a more comfortable life. I'm just glad they don't have to experience the hardships I endured at their age. Finally, I'm really enjoying being hands on mom right now and taking care of our fourth child Jiren, who just turned two. The fact that I can go to school meetings, organize baptisms, plan birthday parties and just be there for my family is really such a blessing and I know I would receive all of this if I didn't dare to find remote work and work hard for my family. My name is Mary Ernestine Sison, 40 years old, married with four kids from Kawit, Cavite, Philippines. I am an online Filipino specialist specializing as a credit analyst and I found a comfortable life through onlinejobs Ph.
