John Jonas (host) defines and promotes the term 'OFS' — Online Filipino Specialist — as a skilled, independent worker from the Philippines distinct from the common perception of a 'VA' (virtual assistant). He argues OFSs are highly talented, educated, honest, loyal, and proficient in English, and gives an example (Avery, a UI/UX designer found via OnlineJobs.ph) to illustrate the role and qualities.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast. The podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas and this is episode 67. What does OFS stand for? So OFS means online Filipino specialist. OFS, online Filipino specialist. I invented it because I don't like the term VA or virtual assistant. People associate the term virtual assistant with a secretary. And not that a secretary is bad or something, but people generally want to hire someone who is skilled. You don't want to hire a secretary or a. A VA people assume is someone who can only do mundane tasks. They can only do data entry. They don't really have skills. They can only follow step by step instructions and nothing else. They can't think for themselves. And that's not who you're hiring. That's not who I hire. And that's not who you want to hire. You want to hire someone who's an independent thinker, someone who will read between the lines of instructions that you give when you leave something off and they'll try and figure it out on their own. That's an ofs. You want someone who is skilled with E commerce or social media marketing or ebay listing or Pinterest marketing or programming or graphic design or whatever it is that you want someone to do. You want someone who is really skilled at it. That's an ofs, an online Filipino specialist. And that person exists. And they're highly talented and they're knowledgeable and they're very well educated. In the Philippines, you want someone who is going to be honest and loyal and hard working and speak great English. That's not necessarily an ofs. That's just the Philippines culture. Those things just come with it. That's part of it. You're going to find that just because you go to the Philippines, and that's partly why we go to the Philippines. That's why we hire Online Filipino specialist. I hope that you can see this picture of Avery that I have here. Avery works for me. He works on onlinejobs ph. He's a user interface user experience designer. We call it UI ux. He is not a graphic designer, he's not a logo designer, he's not a web designer. I tried to have him do all of these things and he's not very good at them, but he's really good at user interface and user experience design. He shows up every day, he speaks his mind, he solves problems, he proposes solutions. He finds issues that we have and is like, hey, I think we could do this. Or, hey, I went out and interviewed these 17 people in the Philippines trying to sign up for OnlineJobs ph and here's the problems that they had when they signed up, and here's what I think we can do to solve these things. He's an ofs. He's a talented, knowledgeable, hardworking, good at what he does online Filipino specialist. That's who you want in your business. And you can find those people at onlinejobs Physical.
