MBA2357 Q&A Wednesday: Hiring in the Philippines: What are the pros and cons?

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling.

Payments and wondering how this became my life.

But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel.

Core Ultra processors will help you do.

More faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey, welcome to the $100 MBA show. Because a better business begins with you, that's why we deliver practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net Today's question is from John and John asks, I'm thinking about hiring from the Philippines. I know that you've hired from the Philippines before. Can you share what are the pros and cons? Solid question John. And yes, I have been hiring and working with people that are from the Philippines for the past nine years and a good portion of our team is based in the Philippines. In fact, our last team retreat was in the Philippines. Because of that, in today's episode I'm going to share the transparent, honest truth about the pros and cons of hiring out of the Philippines. There is incredible opportunity and overall I would recommend going after talent in the Philippines. I wouldn't be doing it myself if I didn't think it's a good idea but with my experience, I do know what some of the pros and cons are. And I want to give you a heads up so that you know what you're getting into so you can navigate recruiting talent in the Philippines properly. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Now, a lot of people look to hire out of the Philippines for a lot of reasons, but mainly people think it's really good value. Like the cost of hiring somebody to be a VA, for example, could start at $600, some even at $500 US a month for full time work. So many people think, hey, this is amazing. I, I can hire an army of people doing all kinds of things for me at that kind of rate. And yes, that's true. And yes, you can hire talent for less money. But that's not the end all and be all. It's kind of where the conversation starts. I want to start with all the pros of hiring out of the Philippines and then I'll go through, I would say the cons, but more like the challenges, things that you have to work towards to improve as well as to look out for. Yes, you are going to get a lot of value for your dollar in the Philippines because of the economy there and the cost of living there. When you talk about US dollars. But I wouldn't say that is the number one reason why you should hire out of the Philippines. Generally, I have found that the people that we hire out of the Philippines, culturally they're hard workers, but they're like anybody else. They're going to need structure, they're going to need discipline. We'll talk about that later. But generally, if you have a good system, they will work hard for you if they're properly motivated. And that goes hand in hand with another pro where I found that the Filipino team members we hire are pretty loyal. They're very loyal. We have team members that have been with us seven years, eight years. If you give them a good work environment, if you give them good, challenging work, if you create a great structure for them, they're content in their job. And this is what I love about it. They see the business or the employee relationship as a transaction. They see it like, hey, I have to show my loyalty. If these people are showing their loyalty, they're consistently paying me, they're making sure that I'm taken care of, and if they're compensating me fairly, then I should be loyal. And I love this mentality out of the Filipino culture. Next big pro is that the English Language is pretty solid in the Philippines. The education level in the Philippines is quite good. Most of our team members are college graduates. Their English language level is very good. I would say most of them are better in written language than verbal. So if you're in an interview and they're speaking to you, of course they'll have an accent because English is not their second language. You wouldn't expect them to have no accent. But I found that their written communication is very solid and then their verbal communication is not bad either. It's probably one of the best I found generally, and I'm speaking in generalities here than any other non native English speaking country. A lot of the Filipino culture is infused with Western culture and music and movies. So they understand a lot of the idioms and some of the inside jokes or some of the cultural references that you might have in your writing or even just in your general day to day communication that kind of leads you to the next thing is that yes, they have their solid Filipino culture that they love and respect, but they're very much in touch with Western culture, whether it's the latest movie on Netflix or music that's really popular today. If this is kind of important for you to have creative writers or somebody who can communicate with customers and understand maybe pop culture references, they know. They know what's going on, and it generally approximates the same cultural or pop knowledge that people have in the West. Another big one I found is that Filipino team members, in my experience are highly trainable, meaning they might come into my organization with a set of skills, with a set of experience, and maybe start in a role and then end up in a different role all completely. As the years start to evolve, as your needs evolve in your business and you can kind of move them in departments, you can move them around and train them up and they're quite flexible and they actually pick up things very quickly. For example, I have a team member that started out as a customer service agent. He was excellent as an agent, wonderful worker, great teammate. And then there was an opening for a QA engineer, a quality assurance engineer over at Webinar Ninja. And he moved into that role and is doing brilliant there. And it's a great qa. He had to learn new skills, he had to get trained up, but he picked it up quickly and was able to make the transition pretty seamlessly. Now this is kind of a pro for me because I live in Australia, but the time zone difference is quite good. It's only two hours in the winter and in the summer months it's three hour difference, so our working hours overlap quite well. If you're in the us, the time difference actually works well as well because the time difference is so great that it just becomes like the next day a little trickier. In Europe, again, South America, if you're in the Americas, it works quite well. And then if your work is asynchronous, meaning that they don't need to be on a call every day, and they can work by sending messages on your project management system and go back and forth that way, or with recorded video, then the time zone really doesn't matter too much. Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge.

Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.

They accept Discover at Renaissance fairs.

Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Geth with the times.

With the times.

You're playing the loot.

Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.

ClickUp just solved AI's biggest problem, and it's saving 4 million teams from productivity loss every day. Unlike ChatGPT and other A tools, ClickUp converges all your work into one platform so your AI super agents have full context to prioritize tasks, execute workflows and draft documents instantly. Teams using ClickUp finish work 30% faster and cut meetings in half. Try ClickUp for free today and get 15% off AI upgrades at ClickUp.com podcast. That's C-L-C-K-U P.com podcast.

There's so many more pros I can go on and on about, but our great Filipino team, generally, they're happy people, they're good people, they have a rich and diverse culture. I just really enjoy working with them because of their sense of loyalty, their sense of hard work, and they don't take things way too seriously. That's what I like about it. Kind of lighthearted. When we're on our team retreat, we had some fun times together. Karaoke, banana boating. They're down for a good time. And I like to work with people that like to have a good time. People I'd like to enjoy their company. We spend so much time at work, we might as well enjoy the time with the people that we're with. Okay, now, John asked also the cons. So I would actually label this as more of challenges, things you have to look out for from a work culture. You're going to have to train and build the culture that it's okay to Ask questions. To say, I don't know, to say I can't, to say I need help. It's hard for them as a culture to say no to you because you're their boss. To say I can't do this or I don't know. You got to make sure that you highly encourage them to ask questions all the time to get them to speak up if they need help. Encourage them that it's okay to make mistakes and ask for help or to say, I don't know or I can't do this. This is going to take some time. It's going to take some repetition. It's going to take a few moments or experiences where they realize, okay, I'm not going to get fired if I say I don't know. In fact, they're going to be okay with it. They're going to encourage me, they're going to show me, they're going to help me. Second challenge I would say is you need to make sure you give them very good structure. I found that if you give them a good structure in terms of their workday, what's expected, their outcomes, what you expect of them, deadlines, you give them a game plan to win in their job, they're going to strive for the most part. Now, of course, there are good and bad employees in every country and every culture, and that's your job as a business owner, to find great talent anywhere you hire. But if somebody is good, you're going to need to give them a little more structure. They're not as autonomous as you might think. Now, this doesn't mean they need to be micromanaged, but they need to have an outline of what they need to do, how to do it. So a bit of training in the beginning goes a long way, as well as some accountability, basically a scorecard so they know if they've ticked all the boxes and know that they've done the task or their job in general. Well, I mentioned their communication is good, especially written, but sometimes their verbal communication is a little bit slower because again, they're not speaking in their native tongue. And now this is not everybody. Some that we have found have near native English speaking skills, but some they take a little longer to express themselves and that's okay. Just be a little patient with them and understand this is just a trade off of hiring somebody who English is not their first language. Now, one of the biggest challenges is actually finding these great talented people in the Philippines. If you're not Filipino, probably don't know where to look, probably don't understand what your options are. Now, one site, a good starting point is onlinejobs.ph is a good place to hire customer service agents, VAs EAs, social media managers, people like that that do administrative work. They also have engineers and developers there as well, graphic designers. But you're gonna have to vet them. You're gonna have to go through the interview process. It's not an agency, so to speak, but more of a job board. There are agencies that you can Google and find that will vet your team members for you, train them up, get them ready. But you're gonna have to experiment a little. You have to be willing to actually hire and fire quickly. Many times we'll have to hire for several positions in customer service. Let's say we wanted to hire two new agents. What we would do is usually hire four, knowing that most likely one, two, even three might not work out. And we have to be willing to fire them quickly if we feel like they don't have what it takes. So. So recruitment takes a little bit of effort, work, research. But at the end, when you find the great talent, it's well worth it. There you have it, guys. Those are the pros and cons of finding and hiring great talent out of the Philippines. John, thanks so much for asking this question. I have to say, after nine years of working with Filipino team members, it's been great. I love working with them, I love the process, and it's been great learning how to find them, hire them, and train them up. If you want to learn more practical ways to build and grow your business, make sure you subscribe and follow to this podcast right now. Whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher Radio or Overcast or whatever it might be that you're using to listen to podcasts, just go ahead and follow us or subscribe to get our next episode automatically and get access to over 2,300 business lessons in our catalog. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Wherever you decide to hire, from whatever country, you're just going to have to find good people with good talent. There's good talent everywhere, and that becomes one of your most important skills as you scale your business. Is recruitment really your job as the founder, as the CEO, as a leader of your business, or somebody who is leading this mission is to find great people who can subscribe to your mission and fulfill what you need. The better you get at that, the better team you'll have, the better product and service you'll be able to deliver to your customers. The better business you'll have. So just see this as an exercise. See this as another rep to build that muscle. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu. Fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

Maybe score a two for five dollar deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more. Limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer single item at regular price.

Bada ba ba ba.