My Experience with a Filipino Virtual Assistant

As much as we can try to paint a hypothetical picture of what working with a Filipino virtual assistant (VA) is like, nothing comes close to providing data like real-world, first-hand experience.

So I decided to share my personal experience working with a Filipino VA and a video editor from the Philippines.

Key Takeaways

• We hired Filipino VAs from recommendations from industry colleagues, but have since found OnlineJobs.ph to be the best place to hire Filipino Talent.
• We’ve enjoyed working with our VAs, they have excellent work ethic and catch onto new tasks quickly.
• There’s a big time difference between the U.S. and Philippines, but we now use it to our advantage by assigning tasks that they handle while we sleep.

Why We Hired Filipino VAs

First, why did we decide to hire VAs from the Philippines in the first place?

There are plenty of reasons why the Philippines is one of the best countries to hire a VA, but to list just a few:

• High English proficiency (English is an official language in the country)
• Filipinos are known for their hospitality and customer-oriented service
• Lower living costs mean great work at a lower price
• Cultural alignment and compatibility with Western business practices
• Large pool of specifically VA talent
• Great freelancing sites dedicated to Filipino freelancers (our favorite is OnlineJobs.ph)

Tasks Our VAs Help With

Our VAs are the unsung heroes of our whole operation here. Without them, we would be lost.

A few of the tasks they handle for us include:

• Any information/data collection
  • Cleaning up collected data
  • Getting the emails of potential leads
  • Data entry
  • Add images to our site (and add alternative text)
    • Resize, compress, and upload images
• Site audits (checking for broken links and images, just make sure things are still working on the site)
• Very light proofreading of posts – make sure there’s no glaring spelling mistakes
• Uploading of content to WordPress
• Auditing competitors and coming up with a brief analysis
• Creating and adding tables to WordPress
• Repetitive, time-consuming tasks that are useful to keep our sites updated
• Video editing
• Light animation (like whiteboard videos)
• Creating thumbnails, uploading per schedule to YouTube
• Customer outreach/support with templated responses
• Finding relevant videos and embedding them on the site

As you can see, the list is extensive.

Hiring and Onboarding Experience

Our hiring and onboarding experience with Filipino VAs was an easy process.

As for hiring, we actually got references from our peers, but there are plenty of other ways to hire. An easy one that we wish we had known about before is OnlineJobs.ph. They’re the best way to connect with the highest-quality Filipino VAs and freelancers.

• See how OnlineJobs compares to Upwork
• See how OnlineJobs compares to JobStreet
• See how OnlineJobs compares to VirtualStaff

Once hired, we introduced them to our SOPs and sent over some training videos that we put together. We also were available to answer any questions they may have had.

Overall, they caught on fast. Our onboarding and training process couldn’t have been easier, and the results speak for themselves.

Benefits of Working with Filipino VAs

There are quite a few benefits of working with Filipino VAs.

The cost benefits are undeniable, but things like similar culture and work ethic are also worth noting.

Some of the benefits of working with Filipino VAs are:

• Their rates are low
• Their business culture is similar to Western business culture
• They have wide skill sets and are capable of a variety of tasks
• The time zone difference can be beneficial, as you can assign tasks at the end of the workday and have tasks completed by the next morning
• Flexibility and scalability- hire more or fewer VAs as you want and delegate tasks based on your budget
• Outsourcing to VAs allows you to focus on more core business tasks
• Immense time savings
• Able to streamline tasks by coming up with SOPs
• Able to do tasks throughout the entire day (I’m in EST, and VAs work overnight my time)
• Able to keep sites updated by having a VA routinely check health site
• Peace of mind – once we had a solid VA – I could trust them to do tasks
• Any repetitive task no longer instills dread in me – I can pass that off to someone else – and they never ever complained about it

Drawbacks of Working with Filipino VAs

There are a few drawbacks to working with Filipino VAs that bear mentioning, though we were able to overcome all of these.

Some of the drawbacks of working with Filipino VAs (and how we handled them) in our experience were:

• The time difference can be a drawback, but I’ve learned to use that as an advantage. Now we line up tasks in the evening for our VAs to handle overnight. When I log in in the morning, those tasks are done and ready to go.
• Not as much cultural difference as I expected – language and English proficiency never was an issue
• Sometimes you need to give detailed instructions – and video demos solve that. I always did one example before requesting tasks.
  • I would also ask to review a batch before proceeding with the rest

All of these are pretty easy to work around with some patience and creativity, so don’t let the minor drawbacks keep you from reaping the benefits!

Should I Hire a VA from the Philippines?

Regardless of your personal situation, it’s probably a good idea to hire a VA from the Philippines.

Though they can be beneficial to everyone, here are a few signs that you could especially benefit from hiring a VA from the Philippines:

• You have a small business or startup and need extra help
• You’re on a tight budget
• There are some repetitive tasks you need help with
• You need a scalable VA solution
• Your business is growing and you can’t keep up with daily tasks
• You want to focus more on main business tasks

Where to Hire a Quality Filipino VA: OnlineJobs.ph

The best place to hire a high-quality Filipino VA is OnlineJobs.PH.

They have the largest catalog of experienced Filipino VAs in the world, and they vet everyone they work with.

They’re hands-down our favorite option when it comes to hiring Filipino VAs and we wish we knew about them earlier.

Read our review of OnlineJobs.PH to see why we’re such big fans.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why hire a Filipino virtual assistant?

There are a wide variety of reasons to hire a Filipino virtual assistant, a few of them being cost savings, scalability, skill level, and cultural similarities.

How much is the hourly rate for Filipino VA?

The hourly rate for a Filipino VA varies widely but usually comes in at around between $5 to $12 per hour.

What do you love most about working with a Filipino VA?

What I love most about working with a Filipino VA is the cultural similarities, the cost savings, and how much they take off my plate. I cannot recommend working with a Filipino VA enough.

What can a Filipino VA help with?

A Filipino VA can help with everything from uploading posts to WordPress to video editing to proofreading and more.