How to hire a VA (virtual assistant) in the Philippines in 2020 (Detailed Version)

I’ve had so many requests for advice on my last piece on how to hire a virtual assistant, that I'm writing a new one about doing hiring in the Philippines, full-time, for <$300/mo as a more detailed guide for 2020.  ​

This is a guide that can help you hire and retain full-time outsourced team members in the Philippines. This will be straight to the point and as short as possible.

A couple fun facts before we get started:

1. Philippines is made up of over 7800 islands.  
2. Minimum wage outside of the big Metro areas is 500 Philippine Pesos per day, about $10.  Multiply that by 20 working days and yes, that equals ~$200/mo.  But, you should be considering outsourcing to have a greater impact on the lives of your team members, not pinch every penny and pay minimum wage.   
3. Of all the countries I’ve been to, Filipinos speak the best American english in general.  Better than other Asian countries, better than India, and better than other popular Eastern European countries.  Bite me.
4. Filipinos sometimes experience ‘blackouts’ where the wifi will stop working.  Hopefully, your staff will tell you the truth with this. Their data connection on their phone is typically prepaid in advance, so don’t expect them to have unlimited data on their phone at all times and fast wifi that never goes down like we have usually here in the US.  

Hiring Process

1. Create an employer account on Online Jobs.  The best marketplace that pairs US employers with filipino workers.
   
   
   
2. Create a job posting with the following sections.  ​
   A. Two to 3 sentence intro
   B. Company Background
   C. Job duties
   D. Compensation + Benefits
   E. Next steps + Application Process
   F. Why it's fun to work at your company
   
   Here's an example of one of our job postings, then click here to sign up for free.
   
   
3. Email back and forth a little bit, and then invite your favorite candidates to interview.  Here are my favorite 3 questions for applicants who want to work at Handshaking.com
   
   A. Have you worked full-time for a remote company before? 
   B. Tell me about your outbound sales experience selling to US based real estate contractors (or most relevant past experience).
   C. What is the smallest company you’ve worked for?  How many employees?
   
   If it’s for a sales position, make sure to get on the phone with them ASAP. 
   
   
   
4. After eliminating more candidates during the interviews, I often will hire 2-3 people for 1 position. 
   
   With a remote and culturally different company, there’s lots of reasons why things may not work out during the first few months. There's simply a bigger communication challenge with remote companies v. everyone in the same office companies, including with the interview and hiring process. 
   
   I will admit, we could communicate better and ask better (and more questions) at all times.  That will always be a challenge with remote companies.  And non-remote companies, it's just naturally easier for them. 
   
   However, make it clear if you’re willing to pay for all 3 new hires if all 3 work out--I don’t think that will happen often.

The first 3 months:

This is essentially a probationary period for us to determine if it’s mutual enjoyment working with each other, and also if we’re able to see a return on investment (ROI) if we’re hiring in the sales department. 

We have training checklists for managers (like for setting up email, keeping track of what access we grant them, etc).

We also have documents that we share commenting access with them and tell them they should ask one question about that document to start a conversation.

Our motto that we reenforce continuously.

Bad plans carried out violently oftentimes yield good results.  Not doing anything, or asking questions that delay taking action will result in warnings.

By the way, in the past we have done 3 warnings:  1st warning, change something, 2nd warning change it now!!! 3rd warnnig, you’re fired.  However, we may change this to 4 warnings with the 4th ‘warning’ being termination.

We paid at the end of each month in 2019 by using Paypal or Transferwise direct to their Philippines bank account (most folks applying for online jobs should have a bank account, but not everyone in the country has one--kind of like Southern New Mexico, USA). 

In 2020, we now pay half the base salary on the 15th, and then the full salary (and any other reimbursements at the end of each month / 1st).



After the first 3 months:

After 3 months, we will ‘bring the new team member into the family by changing a couple things.  Essentially, benefits and some formalities:

1. Upgrading their electronics (company owned).
   
   
2. Paying for their wifi and possibly upgrading it; however, they should have great wifi on the day they start work.  That and having a computer and smart phone are part of having an online job.
   
   
3. Allow them to take one week vacation paid time off and one week sick paid time off.
   
   
4. Pay the 13th month (more on that in a bit) in December.
   
   
5. Add them to the Handshaking Team page on the website.
   
   
   
   

Helpful tools you probably want to use with a remote team:

Hubspot: Pretty complicated for our 8 person company, but worth it once you get your data all organized and processes consistent.  DON'T USE IF YOU'RE BRAND NEW.
Freshbooks: we use for invoicing, links with paypal, stripe, and wepay.
Transferwise: for international direct deposit / payments
Callrail: We use for managing inbound leads from our 75 different lead generation website.
Google Chat:  (should we change to Slack?)
Hubstaff: Take the pain out of tracking time, automate it.



More info on how we run things:

The only three things our team members need to pay attention to in order to succeed:

1. All emails responded to within 48 hours
2. No chat messages unread or unresponded to, ever.
3. Google Calendar always accurate of when they’re working and what they’re working on.

13th month:  This is a concept in the Philippines where teammembers are paid an additional month’s salary at the beginning of December

End of Day (EOD) Report:  Just email me and managers 3-5 bullet points on what you worked on each day.  This helps follow-up on ongoing conversations, answering training questions, evaluating how fast new hires on catching on in their first 3 months.

Quarterly Bonuses: I typically will email our sales team and/or SEO team specific bonuses that are available to them each quarter.

Whew, that's all for, feel free to contact me directly if you have more questions on this on the Matt Holmes Speaking Website.