A strong candidate in the Philippines is usually employed, and increasingly is being approached by several international companies at once. Your job description is not competing against silence. It is competing against other offers from companies the candidate has also never heard of.
That changes what the document has to do. It is not a specification for the role, it is the first evidence of what working for you would be like, and candidates read it that way whether or not it was written that way.
Two things decide whether it works. Whether the reader can picture the actual work, and whether the terms that matter most to them are stated rather than deferred. Pay, hours and the shift are the terms candidates screen on hardest, and vagueness on any of them is read as bad news.
The unstated cost of getting this wrong is not an empty pipeline. It is a pipeline full of the wrong people, which consumes weeks before anyone notices.
Hiring & Search
How to write a job description that attracts Filipino talent
In short
A job description that attracts strong Filipino talent is specific about the role and the growth path, honest about pay and working hours, and clear that this is a full-time team position, not gig work. Vague, generic postings attract volume; specific, respectful ones attract the right people.
The same role can attract a flood of unqualified applicants or a short list of strong ones, depending on how the job description is written. Here is what works when hiring in the Philippines.
What a job description is actually competing against
The 3 things candidates screen on before anything else
Pay, hours and stability, in roughly that order, and all 3 are frequently left vague.
Pay. A range that is absent or absurdly wide reads as a company that has not decided, or one that intends to negotiate downward. Strong candidates who are already employed do not spend an evening applying to find out.
Hours and shift. This is the single largest filter and the one most often buried. Night work carries a statutory differential of at least 10 percent for hours between 10pm and 6am, and it changes who is willing to apply and who will still be there in year 2. Stating it plainly costs you applications from people who would have left anyway.
Stability. Whether this is a permanent employed role with statutory benefits or a project engagement. Candidates in this market read ambiguity here as a warning, and they are usually right to.
Pay. A range that is absent or absurdly wide reads as a company that has not decided, or one that intends to negotiate downward. Strong candidates who are already employed do not spend an evening applying to find out.
Hours and shift. This is the single largest filter and the one most often buried. Night work carries a statutory differential of at least 10 percent for hours between 10pm and 6am, and it changes who is willing to apply and who will still be there in year 2. Stating it plainly costs you applications from people who would have left anyway.
Stability. Whether this is a permanent employed role with statutory benefits or a project engagement. Candidates in this market read ambiguity here as a warning, and they are usually right to.
What a vague description actually costs
Not an empty pipeline. A full one of the wrong shape.
Every unqualified applicant consumes screening time, and screening time is the scarce resource in a search. A description that attracts 200 mismatched applications is more expensive than one that attracts 20 relevant ones, and it delays the offer by weeks.
The second cost arrives later. Candidates who accept a role that was described loosely discover the reality at week 3, and early attrition sends you back to the start with the replacement cost of a failed hire, which runs 30 to 200 percent of salary depending on seniority.
Every unqualified applicant consumes screening time, and screening time is the scarce resource in a search. A description that attracts 200 mismatched applications is more expensive than one that attracts 20 relevant ones, and it delays the offer by weeks.
The second cost arrives later. Candidates who accept a role that was described loosely discover the reality at week 3, and early attrition sends you back to the start with the replacement cost of a failed hire, which runs 30 to 200 percent of salary depending on seniority.
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