Actually, scratch that.
You’re completely clueless when it comes to hiring remote Filipino workers — and that's okay.
In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through the process of hiring your very first Filipino virtual assistant, from figuring out the tasks you can delegate to making sure that they stick with you for a long time.
After you finish this guide, you'll be able to hire — and retain — remote Filipino talent with ease and confidence.
Let’s dive right in:
First, let’s have a quick refresher on why hiring Filipino virtual assistants is one of the best decisions you can make for your business.
Remote Filipino assistants are highly skilled, efficient, and organized. On top of that:
You can enjoy huge cost savings when you hire virtual assistants from the Philippines. Depending on their level of skill and expertise, you can get a full-time Filipino virtual assistant for only around $800-$1,200 per month. In contrast, hiring a local counterpart can cost you $4,300 at the very least.
By hiring remote Filipino staff, you’ll be able to build a team faster, take on more projects, and ultimately grow your business.
According to Education First’s English Proficiency Index (EPI), The Philippines ranks 2nd in Asia for English proficiency — just one spot below Singapore. With little to no language barrier, you can communicate and collaborate with your remote Filipino staff with ease.
Filipino virtual assistants get American jokes, slang, and current events. Building a great working relationship with them will be relatively easy. Most Filipino remote workers are also familiar with Western work styles, making them a great culture fit for your company.
Virtual assistants from the Philippines are no strangers to outsourced work. Thanks to the country’s robust business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, most candidates from the Philippines are familiar with working in US time zones. They’re also proficient with remote tools and processes.
Learn more: Why Business Owners Choose To Hire Remote Staff From The Philippines
Another advantage of hiring from the Philippines is that you can outsource a wide variety of tasks. Remote administrative assistants, for example, can help you with day-to-day tasks like scheduling, email management, bill payments, and data entry.
But here’s the kicker:
You don’t have to stick to delegating admin work when working with Filipinos. With the country’s diverse talent pool, you can also hire:
The country’s talent pool is full of experienced individuals with college and even post-grad — degrees who are looking for opportunities to work remotely. You can outsource leadership roles like:
If you’ve got a rapidly growing team and would like to delegate people and management — hiring leadership roles in the Philippines can be a great option.
Struggling to find specific roles like Tiktok content creators, architectural drafters, or keto coaches? You can outsource these positions to the Philippines, too. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been able to hire hard-to-find roles like:
Bottom line: if you can outsource it, a remote Filipino employee can do it.
You might be wondering about the tax implications of hiring remote workers from the Philippines.
Every business is different, so it's best to consult with your accountant about the tax implications of hiring remote staff for your company. To give you an overview of what you can generally expect, though, here's the low-down:
First off, you're not required to pay Philippine taxes if your business is domiciled and registered in the US. Your remote Filipino assistants are responsible for filing their own taxes and other mandatory government contributions.
Since your Filipino staff are technically classified as remote independent contractors, you're not required to give them benefits mandated by US law, either. This also means that you don't need to file a 1099 form, as this applies to individual contractors who are physically located in the US.
Learn more: What to expect when hiring remote Filipino assistants
Now that we’ve got all of that out of the way, let’s tackle your biggest question: how do you hire top Filipino talent?
Hiring remote staff from the Philippines used to be a long and complicated affair full of scammy sites, unreliable candidates, and tons of frustrated late-night snacking. We’ve done away with all that. Today, you can hire the best talent from the Philippines in 6 easy steps.
Here’s how:
What tasks do you need to outsource to a remote assistant? Figure this out early in the process so that you can hire the right people. You don’t want to hire a specialist only to assign super varied tasks that are best done by a general VA.
Determining what tasks to delegate also helps you create a winning job description, which we’ll talk about later.
Open a document on your computer or keep a notepad on your desk. Track everything you do throughout the day— from personal tasks to work-related duties.
This is called a task audit. It helps you get a birds-eye-view of where you spend your time. To get more data, audit your tasks for a week.
What’s their common denominator? Are they general admin tasks? Or do they tend to be more specific like finance, podcast editing, managing your social media channels, or creating multimedia assets?
Once you zero in on this pattern, you’ll be able to figure out if you need a general virtual assistant or someone with a more specific skill set. If it’s general tasks, hire a VA. If you can find a theme or pattern, go for a specialist.
After figuring out the role you want to hire, decide if you need to hire full-time staff or if you can get by with part-timers or freelancers.
You can use platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, or People Per Hour to hire freelancers or part-time staff.
However, if you’re looking to delegate a more consistent workload or need someone to fully take ownership of a role within your company, hiring a full-time employee makes more sense.
In our experience, full-time staff are also:
One of the biggest benefits of hiring full-time staff is that they help you keep — and cultivate — company knowledge. You can build a stronger organization by developing employees into leaders and subject-matter experts. By hiring and retaining full-time staff, you wouldn’t have to spend so much time, money, and energy looking to fill roles, either.
Looking for part-time or freelance workers takes the same effort as hiring full-time employees. If you can hire full-time staff — and if it makes business sense to do so — go for it.
Learn more: Why hiring full-time remote staff is worth it
You now know the positions you’re hiring for and their work cadence. Now, it's time to put it all in a job description.
A job description is essentially a document that outlines:
Here’s an example of a job description for an operations manager:
Job descriptions are your primary way of attracting the right candidates, so make it count! Steer away from vague job titles with words like “ninja” or rockstar”. Instead, make sure that the job title clearly describes the role and is easily understood by applicants. Plus points if it’s easily searchable!
Don’t forget to mention the salary range, time zone, and if applicable, tech requirements in your job description. Make it exciting for prospects to apply by listing down the benefits and perks they can expect once hired.
Lastly, show off your company’s culture and values. You can use this as an opportunity to attract people who align with your company’s goals, mission, and vision.
Use AI tools to create a job description. If you’re having trouble finding the right words for your job description, use AI tools like ChatGPT to help you out. Enter this prompt: “Write a job description for [position]” and then edit the results accordingly.
Learn more about writing a winning job description here
After you finish writing your job description, you can now post it as a job ad on various job boards. You can also put up a job ad on LinkedIn or blast it out to your own network for referrals.
This is how it usually works, but there are obvious downsides to this process. First, it’s time-consuming to do things on your own. We’re talking about spending hours screening applicants, reviewing resumes, sending out tests, and following up on different candidates.
It’s a lot.
Plus, job sites don’t actually vet candidates. Many of their skills assessments are self-reported, so there’s really no credible way to tell if that candidate is truly qualified for the job. At the same time, these sites can’t guarantee hires. You’ll actually have to pay extra if you want your job ad to get more visibility.
We’re a headhunter agency that helps business owners hire top Filipino talent. We use a network of professional talent scouts to find, screen, and test candidates on your behalf.
Here’s a quick look at our process:
After you fill out an inquiry, a project manager will get in touch to iron out the details of the position.
Our team of professional talent scouts and assessors will then find candidates that might be a good fit for the role. Each candidate will go through a rigorous screening process that involves skills assessments, English language proficiency tests, behavioral interviews, and background checks.
Successful candidates will be shortlisted and presented to you. You’ll have the opportunity to set up interviews with each candidate to see if they’re a great fit for your company.
The last step is for you to pick the best candidate for the job. After hiring, we’ll hand the relationship over to you and you can then start working with your new remote assistant.
With Somewhere, you don’t have to worry about finding, screening, and reviewing candidates yourself. All you have to do is provide a job description, show up for the interviews, and hire the candidate that best fits your business needs.
The best part?
Unlike job boards that ask you to pay every time you post or staffing agencies that tack on huge markups on remote talent, you only pay us a one-time finders fee. You can learn more about how a headhunter agency works here.
Whether you’re going the DIY route or using Somewhere to hire remote employees, you’ll have to hop on an interview to get to know the applicants.
Interviews are a great opportunity to know the candidates beyond what they put in their CVs. It’s your chance to see if they’re a good culture fit, learn more about their soft skills, and determine if they’re a great match for the job.
Your questions can make or break the interview, so make sure to ask the right ones!
Here are some insightful questions that you can ask potential employees during the interview:
Make it a conversation! Encourage the applicant to ask questions about the role, your company’s goals, your culture, and your work style. The ideal candidate should be curious and genuinely interested in the role. Learn more about interview best practices here.
The post-interview period is probably the most crucial part of the process. After each interview, take 5-10 minutes to debrief and write your notes about each candidate. You’ll likely get a lot of good candidates with similar backgrounds and skill sets at this point. Being able to review the small details will help you decide who to hire.
Let’s say you found the perfect candidate and hired them for the job. Congrats!
Now what?
Most business owners simply assign tasks right away — and then get frustrated when assistants don’t meet their expectations. Before you delegate, ease your assistant into this new role by onboarding them.
Onboarding allows you to set the right expectations with your VA. It also allows you to grant access to necessary tools and get them up to speed on the projects that are currently on your plate. A solid onboarding experience helps you integrate your assistant and ultimately delegate more tasks, so it’s important to do it right from the get-go.
Check out the full onboarding guide here
Believe it or not, hiring is just the beginning. As you build your working relationship with your assistant, you’ll also need to carve out time for training.
This process is crucial, especially if you have very specific business processes and detailed workflows. Giving your VA time to adjust, especially if the task has a steep learning curve, is vital if you want to keep them in your company.
Training starts during your very first onboarding call —and it doesn’t have to be fancy or sophisticated either. You can start by organizing your SOPs according to importance or frequency. This way, your new assistant will know what to prioritize.
If you've got senior employees on board, ask them to develop a training and orientation deck for new team members.
It's also important to set the right expectations for your assistant. Give them a firm but reasonable training deadline. For example, two to four weeks of training should be enough time for a general VA to build foundations. From there, they can learn while on the job.
If the task is too big or complex, set realistic milestones. Say you're training a VA to help you with customer service emails. Here's what your training milestones might look like:
Setting milestones definitely makes training more structured and organized.
In training, context is king. Filipino assistants are great at following instructions, but they can perform better if you provide context to their tasks. Letting them know about the purpose of their tasks — giving the why instead of just the what — is a great way to develop independence and autonomy among your remote staff. By giving your assistant a bit of agency, they're able to find solutions for themselves when they encounter roadblocks.
Online courses are a great way to build your assistant's skills. There are lots of free resources available on Hubspot Academy, Google, and even LinkedIn. Enrolling them in paid courses will cost a pretty penny — but the learning’s more structured and actionable. If you’ve got the budget for it, find a course that’ll help them grow professionally.
Lastly, you can also share resources like ebooks, slides, PDFs, and other digital learning resources.
Learn more: How to train your Filipino VA
Tracking employee productivity can be tricky when you're working with a remote team — but it's not impossible.
There are lots of effective ways to make sure that your team is doing their job without being a terrible micromanager. Here are some things you can do to make sure that your remote team remains productive, even when you’re halfway around the world:
Do you measure productivity based on the hours an employee has clocked in? Or would you rather base it on the quality of their output?
Determining this helps you establish policies that will guide you and your team as you grow. It will also determine your company's work style.
For example, if you want to measure productivity through hours clocked in, you might need to invest in time-tracking software or have your team fill out daily timesheets.
Using an output-based approach, on the other hand, means that you can offer an asynchronous or flexible work arrangement. The caveat is you'll need to set clear communication and project management processes to make sure that deadlines are met and resources are not wasted.
Whether you’re going for a time-based or output-based approach, setting SMART goals will help you track your team's productivity.
Instead of launching projects on the fly, plan them out per quarter or go on a six-week sprint. This will help you set clear deliverables with realistic deadlines for your team. If you’re working on a big campaign or initiative, break the project into phases and map out milestones to guide your team.
Apps like Asana, Basecamp, or Trello allow you — or your project managers — to create timelines and streamline project communication. They’re super helpful especially if you have different team members collaborating on multiple projects.
Since everyone can view the status of the tasks on project management tools, this also promotes accountability and task ownership among your team.
Don’t use email for project communication! This will leave your inbox cluttered with notifications. Use a project management app or dedicated channel instead.
As mentioned earlier, time-tracking tools can be useful if you’re measuring employee productivity based on hours worked. They help you reduce waste, visualize tasks better, and improve task prioritization and scheduling.
They’re also great if you’re still building trust with your employees. Aside from showing you where your assistants are spending the most of their time, apps like Clockify, Jibble, TimeDoctor, and Hubstaff also help you gather data on:
Overall, time-tracking tools can be a great way to track employee productivity, especially if you’re still building a relationship with them, or if you’re working with multiple clients.
Sometimes all it takes is a simple prompt to check in on your remote employees. You can automate check-in questions like “What did you do today?” or “What’s your biggest win this week?” on communication channels like Slack or Basecamp. Your team’s answers to these prompts should give you an idea of what tasks they’re working on. It’s also a natural and non-intrusive way of generating status reports from your remote employees.
Creating a company culture that centers around genuine relationships is also an effective way to keep your remote team motivated and productive.
"If you have a company where you empower people and let them know that their hard work has a direct impact on the company's success, people will care more," shares Pammy, Somewhere’s Head of People and Culture.
When people care about their work and the people they work with, they’ll take the initiative to be productive.
Learn more: How to Track Remote Employee Productivity
To get the most out of your virtual assistant, you'll need to share confidential information like:
How can you share this type of information safely?
Here are a few steps you can take to ensure that your data stays secure even when you're sharing it with an assistant:
What are the most vulnerable parts of your business? Identify these areas early on so you can take proactive steps to secure them.
For example, if your business is built around a proprietary product design or formula, investing in strong cybersecurity measures could be worth it.
Or if you collect personal customer information on your CRM, you might want to require your staff to set up 2-factor authentication to keep things extra secure.
Again, pinpoint the most critical aspects of your business and protect them from the get-go.
Tools like LastPass, 1Password, and Dashlane are great for sharing different passwords securely. They also allow you to monitor your team's access across different apps. You can easily add or revoke access as needed.
This way, you don't need to share logins over email — or worse, chat — where they can be easily compromised.
Share only what's necessary. For example, while you might need to grant your personal assistant access to your company credit card information, you don't need to share that with, say, the graphic designer who does your social media posts.
Another way to do this is by giving tiered access to your employees. Websites and social media accounts, for example, allow you to choose the level of access you can give to your staff. If you simply need someone to post content for you, you can simply assign them as an editor instead of giving them full admin access.
Revoke a team member’s access once they leave your company. Include this in your offboarding process so you don’t forget!
Learn more: How to share confidential info like passwords and credit card numbers safely
Full-time virtual assistants in the Philippines usually work 40 hours a week and get paid twice a month. Depending on their skill level and expertise, the average salary for a full-time virtual assistant from the Philippines is around $800-$1,000 per month.
The salary for other remote roles will depend on the task and its complexity. Mid-level customer support representatives, for example, can cost around $600-$900. For senior roles or those that need a very specific skill set like software development can cost around $1,000-$3,000.
To learn more about the salary rates of remote Filipino assistants, download our free salary guide.
There are lots of payment channels available to Filipino virtual assistants and other remote workers. The most common ones include Paypal, Wise, Payoneer, and Veem.
Here at Somewhere, we use Veem to pay our distributed team. We love using it for the following reasons:
Since remote Filipino staff are technically classified as independent contractors, you're not required by law to provide them benefits. But you probably should.
Remember, you're not the only company hiring out there. To attract — and retain — the best Filipino talent, be prepared to provide benefits like the following:
Filipinos typically get up to 15 vacation leaves and 10 paid sick leaves throughout the year. Pregnant employees get up to 105 days of paid maternity leave. Consider these baselines as well as national Filipino holidays when creating your leave policies.
If you've got some financial wiggle room, you can also add a 13th-month pay to your benefits roster. This is an additional pro-rated payment that employees receive at the end of each year. It's usually a whole month's worth of wages.
You can cover the entire cost or a portion of your assistant's healthcare insurance premiums. You can also reimburse their contributions to the country's universal healthcare plan, PhilHealth.
Since your assistant is working from home, you can add a tech stipend to your benefits package. This gives them a budget to upgrade their work-from-home setups.
You can provide other stipends for stuff like:
Co-working spaces provide an awesome environment for productivity and engagement, so consider adding this as a perk for successful candidates.
Lastly, add performance bonuses into the mix. This motivates employees to hit targets and boost productivity, too.
Learn more: What employee benefits should you provide your remote team?
As your team grows, you'll need to conduct regular evaluations to make sure that your assistants continue to give quality results. A well-executed evaluation is a great way to deliver constructive feedback, helping your VA work improve their skills and grow as a professional.
Lastly, if you want to have an objective basis for rewards or disciplinary actions, regular evaluations can help you achieve that.
To evaluate your virtual assistant's performance objectively and effectively, here's what you can do:
What are your assistants working towards? What goals and criteria should they meet?
To evaluate without bias, let your assistants know about your expectations right from the beginning. Set key performance indicators (KPIs) that make sense for their role.
For example, if you're hiring a virtual assistant, you can evaluate them based on how efficiently they respond to emails on your behalf. Or if you're hiring a social media manager, you can set criteria based on the growth of your accounts and audience engagement.
Your criteria may vary from role to role. The important part is that they should be objective, realistic, and communicated early.
There are lots of evaluation methods that you can choose from. For most business owners, a simple checklist would do.
You can also use a 1-5 scale, a trait-focused method, a pass-fail method, peer evaluations, or even self-ratings.
Whichever method you prefer, make sure that you conduct these evaluations regularly. Most companies only do these at the end of the year, but if you have team leaders who can evaluate quarterly or even monthly, that would be better.
Remember those regular check-ins? They're an excellent way to evaluate your assistant’s progress. Have your assistant document your talking points for every check-in so that you can have notes to look back to when it's time to evaluate their performance.
Sometimes, you'll have to deliver constructive feedback to employees that are lagging behind in terms of performance.
Do this well by striking a balance between objectivity and empathy. On one hand, give feedback based on facts, not feelings. On the other, come from a place of genuine help and curiosity instead of just reprimanding them.
It takes a lot of skill, but with time, you'll be able to develop it.
Learn more: how to evaluate your virtual assistant's performance
Hiring a remote Filipino assistant is one thing. Getting them to stay and grow with your company is a whole other ballgame.
Retaining your Filipino virtual assistants doesn't just save you a lot of time and money in the long run. Employee retention also helps you keep company knowledge, build strong relationships, and even delegate high-level tasks like operations and project management.
The kicker?
It doesn't take a lot to retain Filipino employees. You just have to make sure to:
When employees feel stuck doing the same thing over and over again, they'd seek growth somewhere else. Make sure they stay in your company by offering opportunities to grow.
This can come in the form of a promotion, continued learning, training, and upskilling. You can also:
You don't have to have fancy foosball machines and sleeping pods to be a great workplace. Focus on building a healthy and collaborative work environment for your remote employees, and they'd likely stick.
While you're not required to provide benefits to remote contractors, you should still consider adding them to retain top employees. Consider the benefits we mentioned earlier in this article.
Cultivating a strong company culture is extra challenging in a remote setting. The trick is in getting someone from your team to spearhead engagement activities for you.
We did that by hiring Pammy, who now heads our People and Culture department. Pammy leads engagement activities and makes sure that everyone on the team feels valued.
Hiring, training, and keeping Filipino virtual assistants is a journey you won't regret.
Yes, it might be intimidating, but the benefits greatly outweigh the costs. By hiring a remote assistant from the Philippines, even small businesses have a shot at growing exponentially without breaking the bank.
We've been working with remote Filipino assistants ourselves for the past 10 years, and they've been a game-changer. We want you to have the same experience.
We hope that this guide helped you gain the knowledge and confidence to hire your very first remote employee.
If you have any questions, let us know. If you found this helpful, share it with a friend who might need help in hiring a VA from the Philippines.
And if you're ready to start a search, we're only one message away.
A virtual assistant from the Philippines can cost around $800-$1,200 per month, depending on their experience, skill level, and expertise. Learn more about virtual assistant salaries from our Free Salary Guide.
You can go the DIY route by posting ads on job platforms, asking for referrals from your network, and interviewing the candidates yourself. Or you can skip all that and use a headhunter agency like Somewhere.
We find, screen, and vet candidates for you. Here’s a quick look at our process:
A virtual assistant from the Philippines is a great option if you want to cut back on hiring costs without compromising quality of work. Filipino virtual assistants and other remote staff are highly-skilled, speak great English, and cost 80% less than local hires.
We'll find you amazing remote employees in the Philippines.
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