Part II of The Definitive Guide to Remote Employees (VAs) from the Philippines
If you read Part I of our series, you’ll know why hiring Filipino remote employees is a beneficial and smart decision for any business.
If you’ve decided that hiring remote employees from the Philippines is, in fact, something you want to incorporate into your business strategy, you’re probably wondering how to get started. The information out there can be overwhelming, so we want to make things simpler and easier for those looking to make their first remote employee hire.
In Part II of our new series, we tackle everything you need to know about hiring your first remote employee from the Philippines. What kind of remote employees exist and the various paths to hiring them – all broken down in this comprehensive guide!
A Quick Introduction to Terms
A remote employee also commonly known as “Virtual Assistant” or VA is any worker who completes their tasks and responsibilities from a remote location away from the regular place of business of a company. They can perform any number of responsibilities and can be hired on a full-time, part-time, or contractual basis.
The term is sometimes interchanged with “remote worker” and “virtual employee”.
Remote work has become increasingly popular in the last decade with more and more people joining the online workforce. With the advent of the internet age and increasingly advanced technology to communicate and conduct business, a paradigm shift has occurred in what is considered “work” and in the understanding of a workplace. Because it has become more fluid, remote employees are now considered the same as any employee in your in-house staff.
Virtual Assistants in the Philippines are especially popular for businesses looking to hire their first employee. If you want to understand why that is, we broke down all the reasons why businesses are seeking Filipino remote employees. They can be hired in two ways: the first is direct hiring through the online job marketplaces, which are a digital database of job listings from companies looking to hire that is targeted at their experienced remote worker members. The other way is through an agency, which provides a more personalized approach to finding remote employees for companies looking to hire.
Types of Remote Employees
There are three types of remote employees from the Philippines that you can hire:
Freelancers / Project-Based Employee
Freelancing has become an incredibly popular way of making money for many people. When you hire a freelancer, you are usually hiring them on a contractual basis for a specific project or a specific task. They are not regular employees and are almost always remote workers.
Full-time Employee
A full-time remote employee is the same as the regular in-house employees in hours worked and in full-time pay. In this respect, it is salaried employment that is done remotely.
Part-time Employee
Unlike freelancers, part-time employees are part of the company they work for and are not self-employed. But unlike full-time employees, part-time employees work for a smaller amount of hours and earn at least half of what full-time employees make.
They can be hired for specific roles that do not need a full-time hire.
WHERE TO FIND FILIPINOS REMOTE EMPLOYEES
Online Marketplaces
As we talked about earlier, an online marketplace is an effective and popular (and often free) way of finding remote workers. It works by allowing companies to post job listings and allowing member remote workers to peruse and apply for jobs. They’re incredibly popular in the Philippines and there are many such marketplaces, but we will only be discussing the most popular ones.
OnlineJobs.ph is the biggest platform for online job listings in the Philippines. It caters specifically to Filipino job seekers and boasts over 250,000 members. It also has a rigorous system that ensures the legitimacy of its members to make sure you’re hiring real qualified employees. Ideal to find full-time and part-time based VAs
VirtualStaff.ph is another digital database for job listings looking for remote employees in the Philippines. Companies looking to hire can either search the database of resumes and profiles to find a fit or wait for applications to come in.
Unlike the first two marketplaces, Upwork.com is more catered for people who are looking to hire freelancers or project-based employees. It is an international platform where you can find talent from all over the world.
Online marketplaces are a great way to find your first online employee but there are downsides to it.
- The first is that none of the members are vetted beyond their actual identity. While both sites go out of their way to ensure the legitimacy of the applicant, it does not have systems in place to ensure the truth of the applicant’s skills, resume, or experience.
- Another downside is that through hiring in an online marketplace, there are no safeguards in place to make sure the working relationship between you and your remote hire is beneficial. You will have to depend on yourself to create the working relationship, mitigate problems, and make the agreements with your remote hire.
Through an Agency
Agencies are another popular way of hiring a remote employee. Unlike online marketplaces, agencies selectively choose applicants that are then matched with a company looking for a specific role to fill. In this sense, the service is more personalized and may be more effective.
No two agencies are exactly the same and each has its own way of screening candidates and making a match between employer and remote employees.
While the benefits are greater in that applicants are hand-picked for the role you are seeking to fill and there are safeguards in place in case the employee doesn’t complete the work or simply disappears. One thing to keep in mind is that, agency services don’t come for free – and the fees of agencies specializing in Filipino remote employees differ greatly based on skill set of the VAs you’re looking for, agency’s service scope, process of hiring and service inclusions.
Conclusion
In today’s installment of our Definitive Guide to Hiring Remote Employees From the Philippines, we went over the kinds of remote employees that you can commonly hire, the two ways you can hire remote employees from the Philippines, and the benefits and downsides of both. To summarize:
| Online Marketplaces | Agencies | ||
| Pros | Cons | Pros | Cons |
| Large database of applicant | Your job listing can get lost among the thousands of other job listings on the site | Applicants are thoroughly vetted and screened | You do not have as much control over the hiring process |
| Safeguards to ensure the identity of applicants (including Government IDs) | Applicants are not pre-vetted for their skillset and education | There is a more personalized approach to finding and assigning a remote employee | There is usually a fee for an agency’s services |
| Sometimes free | You will be solely responsible for managing your remote staff | Agencies become mediators for misunderstandings and discussions even after the hire | |
In Part III of the series, we will cover everything you need to know about hiring Filipino remote employees, from labor laws to salaries to cultural differences.
For any inquiries, don’t hesitate to contact us.