Mini Case Study - OnlineJobs.ph (11)
Hey everyone -
I recently signed up for OnlineJobs.ph to hire our first fulltime support staff position.
I've been using Upwork like crazy the last few months but I wanted to hire someone fulltime, and was very impressed after watching all of John Jonas's videos about OnlineJobs.ph (Mr Jonas is an STM member too although I can't figure out how to @ him for some reason as there's a space in the middle of his username).
Anyway... I signed up for the paid account and also bought his OneVAAway course, which was excellent.
Here's how everything went:
-The whole process took about 12-15 hours of work, including writing the job description, posting it, and emailing back and forth with the applicants. I was extremely, extremely detailed and purposeful (and OCD) in how I did it though, or could have probably done it in 50% of the time.
-For our job posting of a Date Entry/Research/Campaign Uploading position at $700 USD per month with benefits, we got 72 applications in three days before I paused the listing.
-The quality of the applicants was extremely impressive. Almost all of them spoke good English... they were all courteous... etc.
-We did 3 back and forth emails asking questions to weed through folks, then did a final 'mini-test' revolving around transcribing ads from MSN as the final test. The five candidates who did that test all did great and it was extremely difficult to pick one. Finally picked the one who seemed the most eager, but would have been happy to hire any of them.
Everything on the platform was great... only criticism I can think of is that on the first day their new messaging system was cutting off my emails partway through (not actually doing it - it just looked like it on my screen) but when I mentioned it to their support staff they wrote back almost instantly and the problem was completely fixed within a couple hours.
Out of 72 applicants I don't think any that were actually agencies or scammers or anything, they all seemed like 100% legit Filippino job-seekers. There was one gal from Thailand but she might have been a Phillipines resident actually or something as it seemed like she had lived in both places judging from her resume.
But yeah, anyway, am not affiliated with them in any way but really appreciated the quality of the service and since Mr Jonas is a fellow-STM'er I thought it would be good to do a post on what a good experience we had 
I love Upwork too, especially for blog writing since I like to pay per word, but for fulltime employees I will definitely be using OnlineJobs.ph.
Obviously the gal we hired hasn't started yet, but as far as the experience on the platform I'd give it a 10/10
I also used onlinejobs.ph when I hired VAs.
Filipinos mostly speak very good english and often also have a good work ethic.
To weed out low quality applicants I already gave clear instructions in the job description where told what subject to use in the application email and few questions they had to answer.
I also clearly stated that everyone who doesn´t follow the rules will be ignored.
This aloen helped alot to speed up the process to select VAs.
Funny was that often the applicants with biggest portfolio and most references failed hardest in following the easiest instructions.
Looking forward to it. I am in the "Upwork like crazy" phase at the moment. I may need to hire one full time end of the year.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
PS: I edited your post + title to add the missing s to the website url, so that everyone can find it :-)
Originally Posted by twinaxe
I think Upwork US-only is very good, some extremely talented people, just crazy expensive, so have only filtered US-only a couple times when I wanted to make 100% sure it got done right and didn't mind paying quite a bit.
Upwork INTL is dominated by India/Pakistan to a large extent, and I'm sure some of those folks are great, but I've had the most success finding some 'hidden gems' in random smaller population Tier 2/3 geo's.
Definitely going to stick with OnlineJobs.ph for hiring fulltime people though.
For the spanish speaking world, you can find lots of really good profiles on Upwork in Venezuela.
Originally Posted by jeremie
That's interesting. From my own experiences, the quality of about 98% of applicants from onlinejobs.ph were sub par - bad grammars, spelling, punctuation, disappearing, not showing up on time, overstating or overestimating their skills, stealing data. What'd be the realistic expectations you set when hiring filipinos?
@jack_l could you update us on the status of the person you hired? How has it been?
Originally Posted by iwanttofly
The gal we hired has been absolutely incredible... always cheerful, easy to work with, caught on immediately... has learned a bunch of stuff I never even planned to teach her... seriously worked out better than I could have hoped...
Planning on hiring another person within next couple months...
@anhka1990 that's a bummer you had such a bad experience...
I do think part of our success on this first attempt was that we were EXTREMELY purposeful about it...
I bought John Jonas's course "One VA Away" and watched it all the way through twice, and I used all their forms and templates.
I also planned everything out in advance a ton and created all the trainings and everything.
As per John's suggestion in the course, I used a video screenshot recording software for all the training. I used Jumpshare and love it. I couldn't get the more popular ones like Snagit to work with a darn to be honest. Jumpshare is only $9.99 a month for basically unlimited video and screenshots and its literally instantaneious - just take screenshot/video, then hit ctrl+v to paste the url that hosts it...
I did also use to manage 30-some people in a past life too so I also had the benefit there of probably seeing red flags quicker than I would otherwise, and being more used to training folks... but I think OnlineJobs.ph should work fine for anyone.
I was also hiring for a position that required no specialized knowledge, so I could pick which applicant to hire based 100% on attitude/English/personality fit. And we offered a very good salary (700$ a month USD).
But yeah, is going great so far (knock on wood it continues to do so!).
Edit: I would add though that I wouldn't recommend hiring someone off of there unless you really set aside the time to properly train them. Its not like Upwork where you can just post a job, hire someone quick, etc. Its really a place for finding long-term, full-time employees who you want to work for you for years into the future. That's one reason I'm hiring slowly on it is that I don't want to invest all my time training someone unless I think they can grow with our company and continue to benefit us long, long into the future, even in much different roles than when they started.
It definitely beats hiring locally in the US though and worrying about crazy labor laws and all sorts of random political nutjobbery creating a toxic workplace
Had enough of that for a lifetime back when I managed people IRL!
@jack_l I agree. I use to manage some marketing people at a Timeshare. We didn't pay all that well, so it was as much adult babysitting as managing. And as much as I would love to hire local, I really don't feel up to complying with all the local laws, plus I'd have to find someone.
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