Thinking About Hiring a Virtual Assistant?
An Introduction to the Philippines
Hiring a Filipino virtual assistant has two advantages: cost efficiency and seamless logistics. You may have heard the phrase “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” as a marketing slogan for the country in their efforts to attract tourists from all around the world. Thankfully, the Philippines is also open for business. Many call centers have opened in the Philippines in recent years, with major companies such as Teleperformance, Convergys, and Accenture. Many major corporations have also outsourced their customer service and other business functions to the Philippines because of the lower costs of labor.
You might be asking, what is so great about the Philippines, and why should I hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines? The reasons are twofold, as we previously mentioned: you get a virtual assistant at a fraction of the cost and can effectively hand off your work to your Filipino virtual assistant and stretch your workday due to the Philippines’ strategic location compared to the United States.
Where Is The Philippines?
The Philippines is an archipelago located in Southeast Asia just to the southeast of China, south of Japan, and north of Indonesia and Malaysia. Its strategic location in the Far East has led to colonization from both Spain and the United States. The country has 110 million people and is quickly growing to be one of Asia’s largest economies. The capital is Manila, with most economic activity taking place in and around the National Capital Region (NCR) and the surrounding provinces, although cities like Cebu, Davao, Baguio, Iloilo, and Bacolod are quickly becoming economic hubs as well.
Why You Should Hire A Filipino Virtual Assistant
Depending on where you live, the average Filipino citizen makes anywhere between $3,200 to $20,000 per year. The higher end of the scale is for more senior roles. For virtual assistant roles, the average salaries range from about $4,300 to around $7,950. By comparison, the average pay for this role in the United States is around $58,321. That means you can save a lot of money by hiring a virtual assistant in the Philippines. But what about the working hours and time difference? How would you collaborate with your Filipino virtual assistant?
Time Difference Makes No Difference
The Philippines is 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which allows them to work while you sleep. That means when your workday ends, theirs begins. If you are on the West Coast of the United States, for example, you are 15 or 16 hours behind Philippine time. Assuming you get off of work at around 5 pm, it is already 8 am or 9 am in the Philippines the next day. You can effectively hand off all the work you want to your Filipino virtual assistant in a seamless manner at the end of your work day, stretching your own work day at a fraction of the price. By the time you wake up in the morning, you can pick up right where they left off.
(Dan Meyer, Virtual Staffing Expert’s YouTube Channel)
Advantages of Hiring A Filipino Virtual Assistant
When you hire a Filipino virtual assistant, you are not only hiring to save money, but also hiring to continue your work day. The Filipino is known for their work ethic and friendliness. Aside from the points we mentioned before, such as cost efficiency and logistics, there is a lot your Filipino virtual assistant can do for you. Depending on your business, this gives you the flexibility to deploy them in multiple roles such as customer service, sales, marketing, social media, and more. In time, they can become just like one of your (work) family.
We hope this introduction to the Philippines helps you become familiar with the culture of the country as well as things you can consider when hiring a Filipino virtual assistant. We will be giving you more information as time goes along, so come back and read some more!
Thanks to Jose A for putting together this post. Have a great day ahead!
Daniel Meyer heads both Sonic Analytics and Sonic Virtual Staffing, sister companies that deliver both data analytics solutions and virtual staffing to businesses in the United States and the Philippines. With over 20 years in Big Data and Virtual Staffing, Dan is one of the most sought-after public speakers in Asia and offers big data coaching and analytics training seminars on both sides of the Pacific.
Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized organizations looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.
Sonic Virtual Staffing (www.sonicva.com) brings virtual staffing solutions like graphic design, social media management, video editing and specialized virtual assistants for authors and professional speakers to small and medium sized organizations looking to scale on a budget and looking for dynamic staffing options.
When not training current and future analysts, you can find Dan championing the use of analytics to empower data-driven citizenship by volunteering his expertise with schools and non-profits dedicated to evidence-based social progress.
