Obvious, and worth stating because the boundary is less clear than it looks.
Fully physical roles are easy to identify. The harder cases are roles that are mostly remote with a physical component: hardware access, in person client meetings, site visits, handling physical documents.
The question to ask is not whether the physical part is large. It is whether it is on the critical path. A role that is 90 percent remote and blocked weekly on the other 10 percent is not a remote role.
Market Guides
When not to hire in the Philippines
In short
Hiring in the Philippines is the wrong answer when the role requires physical presence, when it requires several hours of live collaboration through US working hours that cannot be restructured, when the role cannot be described in outcomes, when nobody has capacity to manage, and when the requirement is jurisdiction specific regulatory expertise.
Most articles on this subject are written to persuade. This one is written because the cost of discovering these situations at month 4 is considerably higher than the cost of recognising them now.
When the role requires physical presence
When live US collaboration is genuinely required
Manila is 12 to 16 hours ahead of the US. There is no arrangement where both sides keep standard hours.
If the work genuinely requires several hours of live collaboration through the US working day, and it cannot be restructured to be asynchronous, then either someone works nights permanently or a market with better overlap is the right answer. Latin America is the sensible first look and the arithmetic should not be fought.
The qualifier matters though. A large share of what feels like it requires simultaneity is habit rather than requirement. Ask how many hours a day this role actually needs to be live with your team. If the honest answer is 2 to 3, the Philippines works with a shifted start.
If the work genuinely requires several hours of live collaboration through the US working day, and it cannot be restructured to be asynchronous, then either someone works nights permanently or a market with better overlap is the right answer. Latin America is the sensible first look and the arithmetic should not be fought.
The qualifier matters though. A large share of what feels like it requires simultaneity is habit rather than requirement. Ask how many hours a day this role actually needs to be live with your team. If the honest answer is 2 to 3, the Philippines works with a shifted start.
When you cannot describe the role in outcomes
If you cannot say what this person will have done in 90 days, specifically enough that you would both agree afterwards whether it happened, the problem is not yet a hiring problem.
Hiring internationally does not clarify an undefined role. It makes the ambiguity more expensive, because the feedback loop that would correct it locally in a week takes a month across a time gap.
This is the most common cause of a first hire being judged a failure when the hire was competent throughout.
Hiring internationally does not clarify an undefined role. It makes the ambiguity more expensive, because the feedback loop that would correct it locally in a week takes a month across a time gap.
This is the most common cause of a first hire being judged a failure when the hire was competent throughout.
When nobody has capacity to manage
A remote hire with an absent manager fails. Not sometimes, reliably.
The time gap removes the informal correction that happens in an office. Nobody notices someone is stuck. Nobody overhears the wrong assumption. What a local hire absorbs by proximity has to be supplied deliberately, and that takes management time that is front loaded into the first 90 days.
If the reason for hiring is that everyone is too busy, and nobody will have 3 or 4 hours a week for this person in the first months, the hire will consume more attention than it returns and will probably not last.
The time gap removes the informal correction that happens in an office. Nobody notices someone is stuck. Nobody overhears the wrong assumption. What a local hire absorbs by proximity has to be supplied deliberately, and that takes management time that is front loaded into the first 90 days.
If the reason for hiring is that everyone is too busy, and nobody will have 3 or 4 hours a week for this person in the first months, the hire will consume more attention than it returns and will probably not last.
When you need jurisdiction specific regulatory expertise
Knowledge of your home regulator does not exist here in volume and should not be searched for.
What does transfer is the discipline: control mindset, documentation habits, evidence standards, audit thinking. Those are present in depth and are the durable part.
So the pattern that works is hiring the discipline and teaching the jurisdiction, and the pattern that fails is running a long search for a rare candidate who already holds both.
What does transfer is the discipline: control mindset, documentation habits, evidence standards, audit thinking. Those are present in depth and are the durable part.
So the pattern that works is hiring the discipline and teaching the jurisdiction, and the pattern that fails is running a long search for a rare candidate who already holds both.
What all 5 have in common
None of them is a criticism of the market.
Four of the five are situations that would cause a hire to fail anywhere, and the Philippines only makes them more expensive to discover. The fifth, live US hours, is arithmetic.
The useful conclusion is that most disappointment with international hiring traces back to one of these rather than to talent, and all five are visible before a search starts.
Four of the five are situations that would cause a hire to fail anywhere, and the Philippines only makes them more expensive to discover. The fifth, live US hours, is arithmetic.
The useful conclusion is that most disappointment with international hiring traces back to one of these rather than to talent, and all five are visible before a search starts.
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