I'm hiring a new writer, so why am I looking to the Philippines to hire my
writer? Now there are a lot of amazing reasons why I've hired 14 full-time
people in the Philippines but a writer is another thing because English is a
second language. Well, I found the secret and I'm going to share why and how I'm
hiring a writer in the Philippines.
I've been hiring people in the Philippines for about nine and a half
years and I've had great, great success. There's been some funny things that have
happened but for the most part, just good, genuine, hard-working, honest people that
I've really come to develop good friendships with. It's just been amazing.
I actually went to the Philippines last November. Met my team for the first time
and I was kind of nervous. Like what's this going to be. Is there going to be awkwardness,
are we going to get along. But it just felt like I just felt so much warmth and
so much appreciation which I didn't expect. Had great, great experience on
hiring people in the Philippines and one area that I've not had success with but
I'm going to try new is hiring a writer. Because...I mean communication with all my
team in the Philippines is really easy. I mean they speak English great. It's
perfect. There's no misunderstanding with our communication. But sometimes writing
is a little bit different just because English grammar is crazy. And when it's a
second language, it's totally understandable. But I found a way to hire
somebody in the Philippines that is a great writer. And so let me explain why I
need a writer. So I my company, we produce 12 different YouTube channels right
now and we actually do a lot of writing in the description. It's just a
paragraph or two on each episode. But when we're putting out a new episode
every day for 12 different channels, that's actually a lot of writing and I
just want to take it up a notch and then plus as a side note, I'm doing a lot of
research in LinkedIn again and I'm ready to step back into the LinkedIn space and
articles are really important on LinkedIn. So I need a really good
writer for LinkedIn, So that's what I'm looking for. Alright, so if I come to
the virtual assistant tool, I want to show you one challenge that I found my
favorite way to do a search is this advanced skill search. And I'm going to come
here into English. Oh and I already have it start there. I was doing some of the
searches yesterday and I found some really good people. Okay, so I've got 2
things selected. Creative writing, I want 5 stars and up here in this category
writing I want five stars. Here's the challenge. So I'm going to put
YouTube right here. I've got ID proof score greater than 70. Date a month or
less. Those are kind of defaults that I really like to go for. When I do that and
I hit search, there's only 2 people available. And this is out of hundreds of
thousands of people that are in here. Narrowing it down by a good writer for
YouTube, people to start putting that in their profile. So that's kind of the
challenge. So what I did yesterday and I'm going to show you, I'm just going to
remove the word YouTube and I'll show you what I found and then I'll show you
the solution. So now I've got 355
people to choose from. So that's actually too much. Too much people to
sort through. A lot of these people here want to be hired as a writer. And you can
tell that because the tile that they've given their profile is content writer or
Irish down here, writer and researcher. Now this one, put writer third, you know
either virtual assistant, customer service or writer, But I mean that tells
you right off the bat if they want to be hired as a writer. But here's the thing,
if they're a really good writer then I should be able to look at their profile
and see have they really used their writing skills to promote themselves. And
that's kind of what's rare in here. As I combed through over a hundred last night
I found 3 or 4 that I thought, "Wow! they know how to write. And as I read
through it, it's like you can't tell it's a second language. It's got really good
sell psychology built into the writing and it's just got really good grammar
and it's in it's engaging writing. And so that's what I want to show you. If you
want to hire a writer in the Philippines, take a look at the writing. This is a
really good resource. So I just randomly, I'm just going to open this profile. And
let's read her name is Irish. So let's see what Irish says. She says
I love to express myself in writing. It is my passion. I have a background in
psychology and counseling law and Theology Christian ministry. So already
I'm not very impressed. She's not using her writing skills to really paint a
picture of what I'm going to get by hiring her. She's... It's more like a resume. It's
it's more talking about herself and I wasn't drawn in. So I'm just... I'm really
wanting to be drawn in and by the way, do have a couple good examples to show you.
So I'm being really harsh as I pick on people. Let's go take a look at Karen
here. She says I had a great experience working as a customer service
representative, technical support agent, product-specific trainer, senior trainer,
operations supervisor, all throughout my career. I will definitely
benefit your company if you will hire me. Okay I'm not impressed. We could go
through person after person, after person and be not impressed. Now let me show you
what it looks like when I am impressed. Alright, so here's one that I
found last night. "Is getting more leads one of your major challenges? Imagine the
competition out there and marketing your services and expertise takes time. A
compelling sales page is important for your business where..." So you see what
they've done here? They've used the writing ability to really promote
themselves and yet they're not even talking about themselves. They're drawing
me in to what I want. Does that make sense? Let me show you the next one that
I found. Okay, so this person wrote, "Are you looking for an affordable but high
quality content to boost your website, social media page or e-commerce store?"
It's a little bit of a grammar in there. But let me continue. "If you're a startup
company or a one-man business who are looking for top, great product
descriptions for your Amazon store or for our first rate SEO blogs and
website copies..." Okay, so there's some spelling errors and
stuff. The point that I love here is that they're writing to me. They're really
writing to me into what my needs are and what I'm looking for and they're
showcasing their writing experience to the best of their ability to promote
themselves. If you're looking to hire a writer in the Philippines, I think this
is an amazing way to do it and it's a great resource that you can't really
filter down to find them but yet, you can comb through and you can find the people
that actually are using the writing ability. Okay, so the next
step is to contact them. Okay, when you want to contact them, you just scroll
back up here and let's say we want to contact Andrea. I just hit contact here
and I can send a message. And I created a template. Just by checking this box, I can
write a message, create a template. I created a template last night and so
I'll use that template but I'll change the name.The email message just says,
"I reviewed your profile..." The message is just pretty simple. It says, "I reviewed
your profile and like what I see. I've been hiring people in the
Philippines for almost 10 years and have a team of 14 full-time Filipinos and now
need to hire a full-time writer to help us write YouTube descriptions for all
the many YouTube channels we produce. If you'd like to know more details about my
company and how to apply, please reply." So I don't give them too much information. I
just...I try and get a little credibility. Let them know I've been hiring people.
I'm somebody you can trust. If you want to know more then reply. Now, I've
actually gotten some responses that I can show you. So this person said, "Thanks
for reaching out to me. I'm glad to have this opportunity and I'm interested in
working with you. Please let me know how I can proceed with the application for
the position of writer for your company." That's all the response I
needed and now I'm going to communicate back with them and have them communicate
back with me in a different way. This next tip has really been a game changer
for me in really knowing how to narrow it down and find the best person to hire.
So what I do is I pull out my phone and I make a selfie video just talking to
them. I talk for about 5 or 6 minutes and I say...I introduce myself. I
say, "Alright, I'm Nate Woodbury." Where I let them see me and I explain what my
company is and what we do and explain what I'm looking for and then I tell
them and I want you to do the same thing I'm doing now. I haven't worried about
you know fancy lighting or I'm not editing this video. I'm just sending it
to you raw and rough. If you can do the same thing and record yourself on your
phone and send me that video, here's what I want to hear from you. I want it
you to talk about your, in this case writing experience or whatever position
you're hiring for. Tell me about your experience. Tell me
why you think you'd be a good fit for this position and talk to me for about
5 or 6 minutes. And you can ask them other things that you want them to talk
about. That one step in getting people to apply, sending me a video, it makes the
process so much easier to really get to know the person. To know if they're going
to be a good culture fit for the company and it lets me know that they're willing
to do hard and uncomfortable things. I find that most people are uncomfortable
doing that but yet they're willing to do that. Then when I've narrowed it down to
2 or 3 people, I'll give them a trial assignment. I
will pay them for... I'll narrow it down to people I think... You know what, if I were
to hire these people, they look like they're a really good fit and if I just
have one position available, I'm probably going to hire 2 because one of them will
work out well and in my experience, one of them will flake out. Their
schedule gets busy, they weren't really able to commit 40 hours a week or
whatever it is. So I give them a trial assignment. I give them a job in this
case, I'll give them some YouTube videos and say, "Hey, write a description for
these videos and send them to me and I'll pay it for your time. And if things
go well then they're obviously going to continue working with me full-time. So
that's the why and the how of me hiring a writer in the Philippines. If you're
interested in doing the same, I recommend just using the same tool that I showed
you. The virtualassistanttool.com. Be sure to subscribe and I'll see you
tomorrow.