OnlineJobs.ph Review + 10 Tips to Help You Successfully Hire a Virtual Assistant

Onlinejobs.ph is the largest online marketplace for finding and hiring Filipino virtual assistants and employees. If you came across this post looking around on hiring a VA from Onlinejobs.ph, you’ve come in luck. Not only will I give you my honest review of the platform, but I will share with you personal tips I have for hiring talent from the Philippines. 

Let’s start off with the pros and cons of Online.ph. 

Pros:

• At present, it's the largest database of Filipino virtual workers with over 500,000 profiles.
• Onlinejobs.ph doesn't take a commission out of workers' rates. This means hiring rates will be cheaper through the platform.

• Contractor rates are extremely affordable and one of the lowest worldwide.
• Cheap rates don’t equate to cheap work. With the right training, you can get equal or even better quality work from Filipino worker compared to local talent.  

Cons:

• The platform has a small subscription fee before you can use the platform to hire (but cheaper rates will mean you save more in the long term) 
• The platform only has Filipinos, you can't hire talent from other countries. 
• You can’t expect to hire talent and leave them alone to do their thing. You need to provide them with instructions and training. 

Why hire from the Philippines?

There are 3 primary reasons for hiring remote workers from the Philippines:

1. Language: The country has fluent English speakers (with American accents too)
2. Easy to work with: Filipinos are known to be loyal, hardworking, and typically look for long term (if not lifetime) job placements.
3. Affordability: You can hire candidates with advanced education and experience at a fraction of the cost of hiring someone in a western country. 

Virtual Assistant Specialties

The Philippines are well known for Virtual Assistants (VA’s) that can help with research, data entry, customer support, and many other administrative tasks. But you may be surprised to learn you can also get well qualified…

• WordPress Developers
• Digital Marketing Experts
• Facebook Marketers
• E-commerce Experts
• Shopify Developers
• Bookkeepers
• Video editors
• Graphic Designers

I can tell you that Philipines has every talent out there, but I thought it would be more interesting to share what I get my VAs helping me to do. Personally, for my own projects, I’ve had VAs help me in:

• Social media management
  • I’ve had VAs trained up to manage my client’s social media, from sourcing photos to post, writing up captions to then putting the posts onto a scheduling tool such as Instazood, so clients will see a steady flow of content on the website
• Website content management
  • I’ve had my VA’s help me make on-going website content management, a frequent requested by my clients, and very time-consuming task if I were to implement all the changes by myself. 
• Blog Writers
  • I’ve had VAs help me with writing blogs. As mentioned previously, Philipines is an amazing country to find talent in, because of their level of English is quite strong, to the point where talking to them will feel like they’re just a normal co-worker. The blogs they wrote would be 95% good to go live, and all I needed to do was touch it up here and there and I could send it off to go live. 
• Customer Service
  • When I was in a situation where I was getting leads coming in day and night, 7 days a week, I knew I needed assistance when I couldn’t answer them fast enough. I hired two VAs working 7 days a week for me helping me quote the leads ASAP, and in return, by having almost instant quotes for the inbound leads, it skyrocketed the conversion rate. 

How much should I pay?

When you’re hiring offshore talent, you’re probably looking for someone who can perform the same task at a fraction of the cost. And you are correct. 

But how much should you pay them? 

Luckily, OnlineJobs.ph gives us a guide on how much to expect to pay based on their industry. 

At the end of the day, this is all on you to make the call on what to pay. If you think the person is talented, then there’s no harm in paying a premium to acquire that talent. 

However, if you want to see if they’re actually good or not, then give them a small task to do before you hire them. 

10 Tips on Hiring a VA on OnlineJobs.ph

Hiring Tips

1. In the middle of your job application, add a line saying “please reply to this add with I HAVE READ THIS”. This simple sentence will instantly help you vet the applicants and filter the ones who care and will read things through. 
2. Once you have narrowed your applicants to the final 2 or 3, then give them a task to do. If you’re looking to have a designer on board, then give them a design task, and pay them a small amount for their time (so they take it seriously too). At the end of the day, you can ask all the questions you like when you interview them, but seeing their actual work is what’s important. 
3. Take note of the response times (consider the time difference of course) and the way they answer your questions during the interview. If they give you in-depth answers to your questions, you will find that you are talking to someone that can think for themselves, rather than a ‘yes ma’am’ 

Training Tips

4. VA’s are just like any other new hire out there, it’s up to you to train them up on your processes and what you expect out of them. If you simply hire them and let them go off on their own, then you may not expect the results you want. 
5. Keep each of your processes and step by step training recorded in a Google Docs, all in a shared Google Drive, so you can give it to your VAs to access for training. 
6. For more complex tasks, use a screen recording software such as OBS or Quicktime to record you performing the task once, and share it on youtube (set on private). 

General Tips

7. Their accents are American (which makes them great customer service talent) and their level of English is top-notch. 
8.  OnlineJobs.ph requires an upfront subscription for you to hire on the platform, but you can always cancel the moment you have found your hire. 
9. Worried about the time difference? It can work for you in both ways. If the time difference isn’t much, then that’s great if you need to constantly talk with your VA, but if you’re at opposite ends of the world to Philipines, then you will be in a situation where they’re working when you sleep. And that’s beneficial too, you can brief them up on work the previous night before and when you wake up the next morning, all the world will be done… like magical fairies. 
10. Talk to your VA for ideas for improvement, this is a two-way relationship, not a one-way thing. The more you talk and bounce ideas off each other, the more your business will grow. 

OnlineJobs.ph vs Upwork

As a user of both platforms for over 5 years (back when Upwork was called O-Desk), I’d say I’m quite qualified to give my optioning. 

OnlineJobs.ph is a platform where you can only hire Philipines, where as Upwork will have workers from every country. Talented people are all across the world, and I can never generalise to say a certain country is more talented than another. However, if I were to choose one based on easiness to work with, I would have to give it to Philipines. Simply based on their high level of English, to the point where I feel like I’m chatting with a very competent co-worker locally. So, if you were to look for someone specifically in philipines, then OnlineJobs.ph is the platform you should use. 

The only thing I have to criticise (but with reason) is that OnlineJobs.ph will require a small payment upfront for you to use the platform to hire someone. However, since they don’t make money on the on-going pay from you to your VA, then usually the VAs will charge less, as they don’t need to take in consideration of the platform’s cut - as there in none. 

So yes, that initial fee to use Onlinejobs.ph can be annoying, but you make it up for cheaper VA rates, and plus, you can always cancel the subscription once you’ve finished hiring.  

What Companies Use OnlineJobs.ph?

If large companies are already utalising offshore talent to help grow their business, then why shouldn't you do too? 

Here are just a few of the big-name companies that use this job board to find remote talent.

1. Google 
2. UBER
3. Unilever

Final Thoughts

To round it up, I highly recommend you to hire off Onlinejobs.ph if you’re looking for offshore talent. VAs from Philipinos are super easy to work with, and I can’t say I’ve had a negative experience with a Philipino worker in all my years of working in this online space. They’re humble and can be fast learners if you provide them with the right training. So give it a go, and I promise, the way you work and your productivity will change once you have a VA on board.