24 Nov 2025 · 5 min
John Jonas promoted Jovan, a long-term hire at OnlineJobs.ph, to operations and project manager. Jovan started as a beginner VA in 2005 and moved through writing, SEO, webmaster, and team lead roles, showing reliability and initiative. Jonas argues Filipino workers often want more responsibility and small businesses gain by promoting from within.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast where we talk about how to become better at hiring in the Philippines and outsourcing in the Philippines. This is episode 79, how I hired a project manager for Onlinejobs ph. So this is an interesting episode for me because this is about the very first person I ever hired. For a long time I have run and managed OnlineJobs PH and I'm still running and managing OnlineJobs PH and it's really good. But about two years ago, when I started creating one VA away and started with my book the Outsourcing Lever and I started adding these marketing tasks to my plate, it became really apparent that I just needed help. And it took me a long time to realize that I needed the help and I'm getting it. So my job with online jobs was to think through things. I think through features, I think through solutions, I think through problems. I manage the developers, I push projects forward, I remind people of their pending tasks, I keep track of the tasks. There's a project management system there for that. But still there's a lot of tasks going on and things just need checking on. So it's time for me to have some help with that. And so I promoted from within the new project manager. The new product manager at onlinejobs PH is Jovan. The very first person I ever hired from way back in 2005 still works for me and I'm calling him an operations manager at onlinejobs ph. So here's a little bit about Jovan. When I hired him, he was a va. He didn't really know anything and he's told me that like, sir, when I started working for you, I was so scared. I didn't know anything. I didn't know how to do anything. And then you started teaching me stuff. So today Joven's an ofs. Here are the qualities that have made him so dang good for me. Number one, he shows up every day and he is very detail oriented. That's number two. So regardless of whether I have good stuff for him to do or crappy stuff for him to do, whether it's thinking work or not, Joven shows up and does the work. And then there's times where he's been like, oh, sir, I just thought it would be good for me to learn some programming so that I could be more effective for you. And so he learned some programming or he'll just come with suggestions for things that we have going on. And I don't always agree with those suggestions. I don't always Say yes. In fact, most of the time I say no. But he's still trying. Like, he's always just trying to help with the business. And since 2005, Jovan's had a lot of roles with me. Like when he first started, he was writing articles and then he was doing SEO and kind of being a webmaster, building WordPress sites. He's been training other VAs. He's been doing admin verification, has been a VA, just a general virtual assistant. He has checked on other ofs that we have. He's been a team lead. He has run pay per click campaigns. There's a lot of things that I don't. There's a bunch of things that I don't even know or remember that he's done today. He's an ofs. He's a. He's a specialist at helping my business grow. So here I have two takeaways from this whole process for me, number one, Filipinos are super loyal and this is really important for small businesses. They want to stick with you and your company. They, if you're willing to invest in them, it will pay over like a thousand times for you. Number two, Filipinos want to contribute. Joven recently sent me an email that said, sir, I want to contribute more to onlinejobs.ph I'm ready for a change and I'm ready for more responsibilities. Which tells you a little bit about his attitude, but it's not unique to him. I actually got the same email from two other people on my team recently which tells you I've been underutilizing them and I'm giving them more responsibilities. Now. A lot of OFs want to do more for you than just data entry work. They often start off wanting to do data entry work or just whatever job they can get, but they want to contribute, they want to be a part of it, they wanna do something important, they want responsibility and they don't want a dead end job. So that's just something to recognize. As you hire people, you may start off by thinking, oh, I just have this dead end work for them to do. And then you find out, oh yeah, this is a good thinking person that can do some really good work for me and I'm gonna try and help them improve what they're doing and their ability to work for me and give them more responsibility. So you might try asking your ofs, like, how happy are you in your current role? What else could you see yourself doing for the company? Or like, what other skills do you have? What would you like to do? You know, we have these things that we do. What would you like to be working on? The things that they tell you might not always align with your vision, but you might find some things out about them. So, just so you know, as I record this, I am a couple weeks into having Joven the operations manager at onlinejobs ph, so there's a lot to still see if this works out or not, but. But so far, it has been so good for me. There are projects that he's pushing forward that I don't have to push anymore. Looked at things like in a task, here are these things that we talked about that need to get done, like A, B and C. And then we get on a tangent and we accomplish A and B. And Joven's come through and said, hey, what about C? Where does this part stand? And that's super effective for me. So there's still. It's still to be seen if this is gonna work out for me or not. But so far it's been really, really good, and I'm really glad that I promoted from within and didn't bring someone in from outside to do this.
