How to Hire and Train the Best Virtual Assistants from the Philippines

The Screening Process

We have three tiers to our screening process:

For Level 1, you can include some basic instructions in your job posting such as a keyword they must include in the subject line or to answer a short question such as “Why should we hire you?” Eliminate all applicants who do not follow these instructions.

For our screening test, we use Google Forms. Here’s an example. Feel free to re-use it for your hiring process. Eliminate all candidates who do not complete the test and/or who did not complete it satisfactorily, e.g., couldn’t upload the picture correctly, too high salary expectations, etc.).

Here’s a summary of the 228 applications we got in a quarter. Less than 35% were qualified after the initial screening.

And out of the 35%, only one made it to the final interview. The majority of the qualified applicants (59%) did not even reply to our emails.

Expect a couple of interview no-shows (about 5 to 10%). Ask each candidate mostly the same questions and schedule each interview to take 30 minutes (allow roughly 3 to 5 minutes for each question, so for a 30-minute interview this would be 10-15 questions).

Here are some of the most common interview questions that we ask our own candidates:

• When was your last job and what were the dates were you employed?
• Why did you leave that job?
• What were the primary responsibilities in your last job?
• What experience do you have with [Seller Central, eBay, Shopify, customer service, etc.]?
• What is your process for [blog writing, writing social media posts, responding to customer complaints, creating FBA shipments, etc.]
• Tell me about your hobbies and personal interests.
• What is your greatest strength and weakness?
• Why should we hire you?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• Case example, Write a response email to the following customer complaint “I just received your item that I ordered from Amazon two days late. Because of it, I missed giving it to my dad for his birthday. On top of that, the box arrived badly damaged. I am disappointed with your company.”

In Level 2, the applicant will be required to perform tests to determine if they really have the skills needed for the job. This is where you determine if the employee has lied or exaggerated in their resume.

Review their outputs as soon as you can so you can move on to the next process as early as possible. Remember, these candidates are likely applying for multiple jobs, so you’re not the only employer who’s trying to hire them.

The last level is mostly for character assessment. Here, you will determine whether the candidate will fit in your company’s culture. This is also the time to set expectations and get to know the applicant beyond his or her resume.

Contract Signing and Onboarding

After you have selected your final candidate, write to them to let them know and ask them to sign a short employment contract listing the salary details, the number of hours they need to work per week, etc.

For the onboarding process, make sure to include the following:

• An introduction to the company, your products, goals, and team hierarchy
• Explanation of the company’s culture and employee expectations
• A training track
• Schedule of daily (and later on, weekly) check-ins

How to Train Filipino Virtual Assistant

How do you train the very best VAs? Before you can, you have to understand some important cultural differences.

The Philippines Is a High Power Distance Culture

The Philippines is a very high power distance culture. It means that in the Philippines (and most of Asia for that matter), people in lower positions assume decisions taken by their authorities without questioning the authority.

What does that mean for you?

• Your VAs will find it strange if you ask for suggestions.
• Your VAs expect you to have the answers to everything.
• Your VAs will perform the tasks they are asked to do with very little pushback.
• Your VAs expect you to give very clear directions.

Always keep this power distance in mind when working with your VAs.

Training Your VAs

The first month is dedicated almost exclusively to training. Unless you’re having your VA work a graveyard shift or you’re working the graveyard shift, you’ll most likely only have a couple of hours of overlap with your VA. Subsequently, it’s important to have your training materials ready from the get-go.

Giving Your VAs Their First Tasks

During the first 1 to 3 months, give your VA very small bite-sized tasks to acclimatize them to your company (processes, products, and people) and also to test their abilities. Asking them to manage all your Seller Central buyer messaging on their third day is a bad idea.

What are some good first tasks?

• FBA shipment audit
• Proof-reading articles
• Price auditing
• Social media posting

Don’t expect to get any ROI on your hire for several months. This is normal. This is also why it’s important to reduce employee turnover as much as possible.

As your VAs prove themselves, move them on to more important tasks such as customer service and light product editing.

For VAs who continue to perform exceptionally, give them more difficult tasks. Be warned though, most hires will have a fairly low ability ceiling that raises very slowly over time.

How to Manage Your Virtual Assistant

If you’re thinking about building a remote team, you will eventually promote some of your VAs. Now, we have a manager and team leaders for the brands we own. But until you reach that point, you will have to manage your VAs yourself. How do you do this?

First, get a reliable employee management platform such as Hubstaff so you’ll know what your VAs are working on and how long it takes them to complete projects. Some of these platforms even enable you to pay your virtual assistant without having to send the payments to individual Paypal accounts.

Related Podcast: E285: Effectively Managing Your Team, Wherever They Are In The World

Second, as your team grows, train and promote your best employees to manage people so you’ll have a point person. In this way, you won’t only have an overseas manager, you’ll also provide your employees with growth opportunities.

Pitfalls to Watch Out For

Before or after you hire your Filipino VAs, there are a few things you want to keep an eye out for.

Job Hoppers and the Disappearing VA Phenomenon

Most online jobs are still viewed as a gig in the Philippines. There are still people looking to work as VAs for only a couple of months and then leave when they find a more “normal” kind of job. And then there are those who leave when they get bored or find the tasks too difficult.

There’s no fool-proof way to filter out the first type of applicant, but it’s quite easy to avoid the second.

Carefully look at the applicant’s resume and see if they’ve been able to hold a job for at least two years. If they’ve had 5 jobs in 5 years, that’s a red flag in our book. We want our VAs to stay with us long-term, usually for more than a year, so we want to make sure the person we’re hiring would have no trouble staying with us for that long.

There are also VAs who just magically disappear after a few weeks. It’s very frustrating. On week 1, your VA is happily doing a perfect job and you prepare yourself to do the things you finally have time for, and then on week 2, they completely ghost you. No work done, no emails, no Skype messages, no nothing.

What just happened?

Disappearing VAs are the result of little or no training, failing to give feedback, and unclear expectations of the job.

If you give your VA a very broad job description at the beginning, and worse, give them little and/or unclear training, chances are they will get overwhelmed and will be unsure what to do next.

The problem is Filipinos are culturally non-confrontational. Most of them are afraid that you’ll be upset and fire them, so instead of asking you for help with a task or what to do next, most of them will just simply avoid you.

Protecting Your Intellectual Property

We’re just going to say it: there’s no surefire way to protect your intellectual property when working with VAs overseas.

Sure you can draft up a non-disclosure agreement, but if your VA does something wrong with sensitive information, it’s not going to be easy to prosecute them.

The only way to do it is to be cautious.

Filipinos are generally trustworthy, but just as you don’t blindly trust someone you meet on the street, you shouldn’t just hand out sensitive information to your VA during their first week at the job.

Start small. Trickle sensitive information to them and get a feel for how trustworthy they are. Gradually increase their responsibilities and build trust.

How to Retain Your VAs

You’ve hired a VA from the Philippines. Everything is going well and you see this employee becoming a long-term member of the team. This article has explored the nuances of successfully hiring a Pinoy VA, now let’s take it further. What do you need to do to make your new VA stay?

Opportunities for Growth and Learning

Filipinos are known to be adaptable, which is the reason why millions have been able to work successfully abroad. A good Filipino VA will thrive when allowed to explore opportunities for learning and expand an existing skill set. Doing so will also benefit you as an employer because that new knowledge can be applied to existing work to make a much better output.

Awareness of Cultural Nuances

John Jonas, the founder of Onlinejobs.ph alluded to some significant cultural nuances when he was on the podcast. Filipinos are generally people pleasers. Being friendly and hospitable is a cultural norm, but the need to please can be overshadowed by feelings of inadequacy when they feel that they can’t represent themselves. It is important to be conscious of this, especially during interviews.

The Little Things Matter

It’s the little benefits at work that truly spark joy.  Some examples include:

• Recognizing a Filipino VA’s efforts
• Providing a reasonable number of vacation leaves per year
• Paying for healthcare

Conclusion

Hiring someone–anyone, really–to take over the functions you’ve grown used to when running your e-commerce business is hard.

It’s especially hard when someone is living on the other side of the globe and whom you’ve only met online.

But hiring Filipino VAs has been one of the decisions that contributed to the growth of our business. If done right, it can make a huge difference for your business too, and you get to experience a culture that’s ironically so close but so different from yours.

How many VAs does your company have? Which job boards did you find your successful hires from?