MBA1677 How to Hire Great Talent in The Philippines + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 13 min
Podcast episode (The $100 MBA, host Omar Zenhom) teaching a step-by-step approach to hiring Filipino talent: craft a three-part job description (role, candidate profile, benefits), use Google Forms with job-specific questions and video submissions, post on OnlineJobs.ph (membership model), run two interviews (culture first, technical second), check references, and offer a one-year contract with a three-month probation. Cultural hiring notes: family focus, non-confrontational communication, loyalty, value experience; consider a local hub for timezone management. Episode includes Free Ride Friday giveaway (EasyCourse Co $500 course) and multiple sponsor ad reads.
Questions this episode answers
Over eight years.
Over 20 people.
OnlineJobs.ph; cited as $200 for three months of membership.
One-year contract with a three-month probation.
Prize: lifetime membership to EasyCourse Co (a $500 course). Winner announced: Sjoy Bell.
Chapters
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Hey, today is Free Ride Friday so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free Ride. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our $500 course over at Ezcourse Co to show you step by step how to build your own profitable online course. All you gotta do is leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Just listen out on Friday to see if you want. It's that simple. Thank you in advance for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey. Welcome to the $100 MBA show where your business is our business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA a complet business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's lesson you will learn how to hire great talent in the Philippines. Many businesses know that there is a lot of great talent in the Philippines. Many Filipinos are highly educated, have good English skills and are hardworking and you can pay your Filipino staff members at a high competitive rate at a fraction of the cost than you would normally hire for outside in the western world. But not everybody in the Philippines is a great hire. How do you find great talent, recruit them and hire them in your business? Well, we've been doing this for over eight years, so I want to share with you what has worked and what hasn't so you can start your search and hire great talent in the Philippines. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Many people think that to find great talent anywhere in the world, it starts with knowing where to look like the right job site. But I'm here to tell you that from experience, the job site matters. But it's not the most important thing. It's not where you start. Where you start is your job description. You want to attract great talent, you got to have a good description that tracks the right people. I'm going to walk you through our step by step process of hiring great talent from the Philippines. And step one is writing a great job description. This doesn't have to be wordy, it doesn't have to be overly professional, but it does have to cover these three things. And number one, what the job is all about. Okay? And of course beforehand you're going to talk a little bit about the company, what it does. But beyond that, the first thing is what the job is all about, what you expect this person to do, their responsibilities. Number two, what kind of person you're looking for. Describe the person you're looking for. It could be a degree, you're looking for experience. It could be certifications. But it can also say, hey, I'm looking for somebody who is a quick learner, is adaptable, is hardworking, is reliable. Okay, that's hungry for a challenge. And the third thing you have to have on the application is about what they're going to get. Whether it's the compensation, whether it's the days off, whether it's the environment they're going to work in, whether it's the autonomy, whether it's remote work, whatever it is, describe and sell them on working for you. The second thing is that you just don't say, hey, send me your CV or resume. No, what you do is you create a Google form and you have them apply through a Google form. And what we like to do, no matter what we're hiring for. And you can hire for a lot of different talent in the Philippines, whether it's customer support, whether it's a graphic designer, a developer, a marketer, a virtual assistant, there's tons of options. Okay. No matter what it is, the application form should have questions that pertain to the job. Actual real questions. If you are hiring for customer service, write questions that customers would ask in a customer service ticket. If you're looking for somebody to be a designer, ask specific design questions. Ask them to provide specific examples. Say, for example, you like, give me an example of creating a blog post image that really converted well and they literally just upload the image. You need facts, you need data, you need evidence that they can actually do what you're asking in the application. We also ask them to submit a video answering a few questions that we ask them to ask. And the questions will vary depending on the position. But the whole point of this video is seeing how they communicate, how they present themselves, how comfortable are they, you know, being professional and delivering their answers with confidence. This is especially important for our company because we're a remote team and we're always communicating on video, whether it's screen shares or screen captures or video calls. And if they can't record a video and submit it, they're not a good fit. This one task filters out a lot of people that are just not willing to do this or are not a good fit or just not professional enough to make it happen. I will warn you, you will get a lot of applications. So by adding this element, it reduces the number of duds, okay? The number of candidates that just are a bad fit. Step two, you're gonna post this job post on a job site. Now you can go to Freelancer, you can go to. But the site that we have gotten the best results from is a site called Onlinejobs ph. It's a Filipino specific job site. I believe it's $200 for three months of membership and you can post as many jobs as you like. You post it, okay, you have a great job post. Now you have an application process. Now you're gonna go through all these applications, go through the videos, and you're going to shortlist. We do at least two interviews. Interview number one is a cultural interview where we get to know them a little bit, know their situation, know how hungry they are, how dedicated they are, if they're going to be a good culture fit, if they're going to work well with the rest of the team. Because if they're not a good culture fit, there's no reason for us to ask any other questions or have a second interview or learn more about their skills. Culture is very important to us and we want to make sure they have the right attitude. We Always say that, you know, you can skill somebody up, you can train them up, but you can't train somebody to have a good attitude. They have to have a winning attitude. And that's why the culture interview is very important. Interview number two is a technical interview. And this is with somebody from their department. Whether it's the lead designer, whether it's the customer support manager, whether it's the cfo, if it's a finance job, whether it's the cto, if it's a technical job, this person will be asking them some technical questions and maybe doing some live action evaluations. Whether it's coding live, whether it's answering questions that customers ask or typical questions or mock questions. If it's a customer service job, that's interview number two, a technical interview. Next, after the interviews, we check references. If those check out, we make an offer and they are on a one year contract with a three month probation. This means that in the first three months, either party can break the contract at any time. It also means that they're going to be evaluated and it's a chance for us to have an extended term, quote, unquote interview. A chance to really see in the real world what they can do. And it's a chance for them to prove themselves that, hey, that interview is just not a fluke. I'm not just great at interviewing or applications, I'm actually good at the job. Now, a few things that we've noticed about Filipino culture and the hires we've made out of the Philippines, and we've hired over 20 people out of the Philippines in the last eight years. Number one, they really, really care about family. They obviously this is not a generalization. There are going to be people that are outside these rules or foundations. I do think that as somebody who's worked with a lot of Filipinos, they really care about family. Often extended family will still live with them in the home. Family is a part of their life. If you can accommodate that and make sure that, hey, they can work from home, they have flexible hours, that's going to make a big difference for them. Number two, generally, generally Filipinos are non confrontational. They're not blunt. They're not going to just go out and say something. You're going to have to ask them a few questions to get the answer you're looking for. They're very polite, they have great manners. So sometimes they won't actually flat out say something when it's needed to be said. This means it's going to take a little bit of Time for you guys to warm up to each other. They feel comfortable to be totally honest with you, but just know that up front, okay, they're hard workers to a fault sometimes. They tend to never say no to things because they want to please people and make sure that they're giving 110%, even if it's at the detriment of their own work life, balance, all that kind of stuff. So be mindful of that and make sure that you encourage them to take time off, to rest, to shut off during the weekends. Filipinos are loyal in general. They want a long term relationship and at their place of employment, they don't want to jump around, they want stability. So if you could provide that to them, it's going to make a huge difference for them. They don't want to shop around for a job, they don't want to move around. Most of the people that we've hired have stayed with us a very long time. And also they say they're looking for long term commitments. So if you can offer them a full time gig, it's more advantageous for you for more retention when it comes to your employees sticking around for the long haul. Now a couple things that I want to mention that maybe not a lot of people are aware of. Experience really does matter, and life experience even. I actually think that when it comes to hiring people in the Philippines, finding somebody that's mature, that's responsible and is a little bit experienced in life, has a few years past high school or college actually goes a long way because of the fact that they're very family oriented and many of them still live with their parents. Parents, and that's part of their lifestyle. Being responsible and being independent and being reliable is something that sometimes takes some time. It takes a little bit longer. It's a bit extended. The reliance on family. We found that people that are a little bit older, that have their own families, their own kids, tend to just be more responsible and really are dedicated to the job. That's not to say that the young staff members on our team are not loyal or dedicated, but I'm working in generalities here. I'm working out of experience. When they have something on the line, when they have responsibilities and they don't have a fallback like just, you know, going back to mom and dad, they tend to really put all of their effort into this career, this position. And maybe in the west, to you, that's like, you know, 21 or 22, but in the Philippines, it's a little bit later. It could be later 20s. This is not a hard and fast rule, but this is something I noticed over the years.
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We are so happy we made the choice to hire out of the Philippines because those team members we have that are from the Philippines are some of the superstars on our team. Some of the most dedicated, warm, kind and just generally awesome to be around with people that you would love to hang out with. I remember when we met our Filipino team members at our company retreat last year. They felt like old friends. They're all heart and I really love the fact that in general Filipinos have a sense of gratitude when somebody treats them right, when somebody does buy them right. And if you can be that for them as their company, as their manager, it means a lot to them and in return they reciprocate with dedication and hard work. Those old fashioned values are still very strong in the Philippines. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show, but today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is. Sjoy Bell. Sjoy Bell says great podcast. 5 stars to the point. Short and sweet review by Sjoe Bell. Thank you so much for leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. You are a Free Ride Friday winner. Your mission is to email me at omar@100mba.net so I can hook you up with our $500 course EasyCourse Co absolutely free because you are a free rifle winner. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. It's that simple. Before I go, I want to leave you with this if you are in a time zone that is quite far from the Philippines where you don't have a lot of mutual time together and you have to manage that team member, it's a good idea to start thinking about building a hub in the Philippines, hiring a few people, even a manager, to manage those employees in the Philippines so that when you have that big difference in time zone, it's not affecting the management of those team members. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.
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