John Jonas walks through what to include in your first message to a new Filipino virtual assistant: confirm they're hired as an employee, set weekly hours and start date, explain daily check-ins, clarify time off and local holidays, give them a first task with training support, detail the pay schedule (weekly at first), mention 13th month pay, and provide login credentials.
Chapters
Tip number three, your initial hiring communication. Hey, my name is John Jonas and this Tip is number three in my series of how to hire Filipino VAs and how to be really good at it. So this tip is about your initial hiring communication, what you're going to talk to your VA about as soon as you hire them. So you just found the perfect VA and you're ready to hire them and you've negotiated with them. So the first thing you're going to tell your VA is you're hired, as in you have a job. This is not contract work and this is important. In the Philippines, someone is way more likely to work well for you if you give them a job. Second, you're going to tell them, here's when I expect you to start and here's what I expect you to do. Now, hopefully you've already worked out with them when you expect them to start. Third, you're going to tell them, I expect you to work 40 hours a week or however many hours a week that you have worked out with them, whatever you expect them to do. Next, you're going to establish the daily email expectation. I've already talked about this in another video. If you didn't watch that video, go back to watch video number one, daily communication. Fifth, you're going to talk about time off or days off. So I'll just tell you how I do it. I don't give my people any specific set amount of time off. I tell them you're free to take whatever time off you want. I just want to know about it ahead of time for you. You may say, hey, I'm going to give you 10 days a year. You also need to work out holiday time. And just be aware that in the Philippines they have way more holidays than we have in the US and their holidays are different than here. Sixth, give them their first task. And so along with the first task, you're going to give them training and explanations and expectations, which I talked about in another in a previous video. Tip number two so you're going to give them their first task and when you give them this task, you're going to tell them, hey, this test may be difficult for you. That's okay. When you come up against the problem, I expect you to come to me. I talked about that before. Next, you're going to talk about paying their salary. So I pay salary once a month. When you get started, you probably need to pay once a week for the first couple months so that they learn to trust you. One of the big things in the Philippines is Filipinos don't know if they can trust you. And so rather than doing a full month of work, which is risky, with someone on the other side of the world and not knowing if you're going to get paid, pay them once a week for the first couple months, then you can pay them bi weekly or once a month after that. Eighth, I talk about the 13th month and I tell them I know about the 13th month and I will pay it next. Number nine, I tell them I expect this to be a long term working relationship, as in this isn't going to last like three weeks or three months. I expect this to go for years and years and years. And so I want them to know like, you're going to work for me for a long time and so you should try and do good work and make me happy, which is great and I'm going to try and do the same thing with you. So then, just so you know, as I've gone through this, usually this communication, this initial communication is done through a series of back and forth emails where I'll send some of this stuff and then they'll reply back to me and then I'll send them more and then they'll send back to me. I don't use a contract with people. I never have. I don't really see a way to enforce it. But you might want to use an employment contract with them. I think the one situation where an employment contract is helpful is just the Filipinos like to be formal and having a contract tells them this is a formal relationship. So then the last thing I send is whatever they need to get started working. So often I'll send access to my hosting account or I'll give them access to our project management system or whatever I need to give them access to so that they can actually start doing work is the last thing I'll send to them. This is tip number three, your initial hiring communication. My name is John Jonas. If you would like to know about my full hiring process, everything that I do to make sure I hire a great VA and what I do when I start hiring them, you can go to 1vaoa.com where I'll walk you through, step by step, everything that I do so that you know that you're on the right track with everything you're doing. Sam.
