The Disappearing Filipino

Okay, so what is the disappearing Filipino? Well, believe it or not, you can sometimes hire a member of staff from the Philippines. Everything sounds great, everything looks like it's going to go well and they just don't show up for work, it happens. And there's several reasons for that. Now for example, it could be that they were interviewing for other jobs at the same time and they went with the one that was more attractive to them.

Or it could be that when they were talking to you during the interview process, they thought, oh my God, this person is a lunatic. I do not want to work for them. But there were too shy, to actually tell you up front so, you think everything's going ahead fine. Suddenly you don't get replies to your emails and they don't show up.

Now gladly. I have not had that happen to me, but I've heard of other people, this happened to them. But one of the things that you do have to watch out for is when setting tasks for your Filipino staff, you have to make sure, not everyone's the same, but you know, this is quite common. You have to make sure that.

They understand the job that you're asking them to do, that you've explained it well and that they understand and feel comfortable doing it. Now, one of the things I would say is very, very important is that you stress to them, that they're learning how to do this job. You're teaching them how to do it. It may not get it perfect first time, but ask any questions.

There's no dumb questions. Get the question asked just now or any point. If you don't know what's going on, just say so I can help you do it. Because at the end of the day, if it's a brand new task and they've never done it before, then they're not going to be an expert at it. They're not going to know how to do it.

But if you literally, set them up with a, hey, I want you to do the following thing. Don't fully, explain it. Expect them to go off and do it and leave them to it. And then all of a sudden the like, Oh, I can't do this task. How am I ever going to explain that I'm not able to do it? So a lot of Filipinos are actually quite shy about coming forward and saying, I didn't understand what was going on.

Could you please help me? And so on. So, you have to stress that it's not a problem for them to ask you questions and how to do things if they don't understand something. By all means, come back and ask you how you do it. Now. Training is key to a lot of the stuff. Every new job and every new task you do, you really want to make sure that you've put together some kind of training for it, whether that be you recording yourself.

Doing it on screen or giving a comprehensive PDF, if it is a short task or something quite easy to do. I generally take a screenshot, point a couple of arrows at it, put one, two, three, four, five and then just explain what I wanted to do in that order, and that generally does quite well for them to go on and do it.

But again, I've heard of people who been working a way, quite fine, their Filipino staff for three, four weeks. And then all of a sudden disappear on them and they're like, Oh, what happened there? And generally speaking, it's turned out that it's been a task that's just being too hard or not something that they could do.

Or maybe they misinterpreted during the interview, what the actual Filipino staff member can do. So, for example, I've found on when I'm on job sites and so on, that they'll say, oh yes, I can do the following. Oh yes, I can do that. Oh, best in the world that this, you know? Well, very good at that. And what you tend to find is that yes, for their core things that you can do, they are very, very good at.

But some of the other things were they say, oh yes, I can do it. It doesn't necessarily mean that I actually can do it to any decent standard or really know how to do it. It may be that they've done at one time, several years ago and they went, Oh yeah, I can do that. I'll, I'll try and learn them that again, if I ever get a job for that.

But of course, if you are sitting thinking, oh well, they can do this, they can do that, that will be great, but you didn't actually ask them, then you will find. That some of them are embarrassed to tell you that they can't actually do the thing that you want them to do, so they just disappear on you. So one of the things I do, which I find quite helpful is once I've hired someone, done all the interview process and very confident that they are the right person for the specific job, I then actually say to them, can you list the top things that you're good at?

It's like top five, top 10 whatever, just the top things that you're really good at. I usually say to them, don't worry about English reading or writing and so on, because you clearly can do that because you've done all the interview questions through email up to this point. So that's no problem, but let me know what other things you're good at and you'll be quite surprised.

Sometimes you'll get things back that, or you didn't know. So I'll give you an example. I've got, well, my son Fraser2TheMax. He's got a YouTube channel. He's got a video editor that is also very good at 3D design. Now, that came back when we sent them a thing saying, Oh, what are the other things you're good at?

Or what do you like? So, we were only hiring him on to be a video editor? And he said, Oh, I like making 3D stuff and I thought. That's really good, you know? So I said, could you show me a portfolio of stuff you'd done? So he sent it. I had a look. I was really surprised. That was actually a really good standard. In fact, he could have got a job as a 3D designer quite easily, but he wants you to be a video editor.

Anyway, later on down the line. What happened there was we did have a task come up. It was actually a task from my company Bee All Design, and we asked him, this client's asking for a logo to be turned into a 3D version. Could you do that for us? And he's like, yeah, no problem. Anyway, so he'd done that. He'd done a great job.

The client was really happy with it, and so he. Basically, became one of the “Bees” he joined Bee All Design as a designer, but his specific specialty is to do 3D graphic design while he does video editing for my son. So, you know, that's something that was quite interesting in a good way to find out. But what I didn't do is just throw a job on to him that he's never done for me before and expect them to be great at it and not give them any information or whatever.

I just said, you know, give it a try. See how you get on. But yeah. Great. So anyway, I'm going to tell you a story about one of the disappearing Filipinos that I had while I, it as disappearing. He was around. The only difference was that he wasn't at home doing the job. No, he wasn't holiday. But here's how it all came about.

What happened was I was sending over work from to do, in fact, he was the video editor before the new video editor that my son's got, and we were sending them over our stuff from to do and he wasn't getting it done, and he says, Oh, I've got a blackout, or there's no power here, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, Oh, right, okay, well that's not good.

Oh, well let us know when that gets fixed. Then a couple of days past, Oh Internet, it's not working. The blackout must have caused the internet not to work, and I'm sitting going, wow, this is not going good at all. What happened here? He was actually quite a good worker, and then all of a sudden, all these problems are starting to come up.

What? What's happening here? You know? I saw anyway, I'm actually quite good a search. So, SEO is something that I've done for quite awhile. So I decided, I thought, While, I will have a wee look to see if he's getting any social profiles now? Now, I know he had Facebook because he was a Facebook friend of mine, and so I could see stuff in his Facebook and there was nothing particularly happening.

You didn't really update it, so that can happen a lot. You'll have people who just don't bother updating the Facebook. That's fine. You know? It's not like they have to do it. Anyway. I started searching and I find a Twitter account for him, and I'm going, hang on a minute. That's sounds like he's over in Hong Kong.

He's on holiday. What's going on here? He told me he's got blackout, and his Internet is not working. Anyway, from his Twitter account, I manage to find an Instagram account and on the Instagram account is, there's him uploading pictures. Oh, having great fun. Look at me, blah, blah, blah. Just basically having a great old time.

Meanwhile sending me messages on Facebook saying, Oh yeah, my internet, that's not working. I'm only using my mobile phone. And obviously anybody knows if you've got mobile phone data, it costs a fortune to upload gigabytes of files. So I wasn't expecting him to do that, but what I wasn't expecting was basically him lying about where he was.

And the annoying thing was that you had holidays that you could have taken. He could have asked for unpaid leave. He could have. Said, you could done anything instead of lying to me and lying to me as like one of the worst things is one of the things I tell all staff members who get a job do not lie to me.

You know, this is based on trust. I am not going to record your screen to see what you're doing. I don't do that. I'm not interested in that. Ask them to update me every day on what they did that day. So everybody does that. But what I don't want is people lying to me because at the end of the day, we're not working in an office together and you need to trust each other.

So, lying is not good. So yeah, that's my story of my disappearing Filipino but it was for a different reason. The person just wants it to go off on a holiday for a two week period, but then bothered to tell me and didn't want to use these paid holiday leave for it, saving it up for something else, I think.

But yeah. Anyway. That's, you know, something that it can happen. Unfortunately. I mean, I've done quite well. I've only had two members of staff who have been terrible. I've had probably 12 members of staff now two of them went on to other work and other jobs, and that's fine. People move on, things change in life, they, you know, get other work or they get better jobs, that's fine.

But the rest have been great. I've had no problem. So, yeah, so just watch out for the disappearing Filipino and make sure. You know, it's not your fault. It's your, not your lack of training, not your lack of explaining the job, but also be available to them to say, Hey, you know, if you've got any problems, just come and ask me.

It's not a problem. It won't affect, you know your job because you've asked me how to do something. In fact, that's going to be a plus point that you are willing to actually ask first instead of just go off and either try and do it and make a mess of it, or just not do it at all and not show up again.

Especially if they were good to other stuff that we'll do for you. That's the last thing you need. So, yeah, any way, if you liked this video, please get my like, subscribe to the channel. If you've not already share the video with any of your business friends or anyone who's interested in hiring people from the Philippines, and I'll see you on the next video.

Bye.