A website designer creates the layout, visuals, text, and user-friendly navigation for your website. As a small business, your website design has to capture and communicate your brand or online identity at a glance. Do that right and you stand a chance to compete with large corporations.

Knowing that, you may be considering outsourcing your web design to the Philippines. Why? Because they’re some of the best in the world.

Advantages of Hiring Filipino Web Designers

You may have heard through word of mouth or discovered through your own research the advantages of hiring Filipino freelancers.

Part of its attraction is the wage scale. Cost of living in the Philippines is significantly lower than that of India and other nations in Asia. That makes outsourcing web design more cost efficient than doing it in-house.

Filipino workers think, speak, and write American English. That means they understand exactly what you mean when you describe your target markets. They can provide suggestions on the best way to effectively communicate your ideas to your customers.

Another plus point of outsourcing to the Philippines is the work ethic and loyalty. Filipino workers partner with you in your business objectives. They want a long-term relationship with your business.

And web designers are usually multi-skilled. In addition to their design skills, they understand web development, search engine optimization, and social-media marketing. This allows them to do small tasks outside of their main work. Even better, they’ll become more effective as part of an internet marketing team because they understand how the other components work.

Plus, some of the best designers are Filipinos. If you look at the biggest design and media companies in the world, you’ll see a lot of Filipino artists working there. They have an eye for design that can’t be beat.

You can check out the web design talent pool at Onlinejobs.ph. There are thousands of resumes currently in the database ready for hire.

9 Best Practices for Recruiting, Hiring, and Working With Filipino Web Designers

Your website’s design is your number-one marketing tool. It’s your first impression. It’s how you meet and greet business prospects, current customers/clients, and the media. Your brand starts there. Therefore, the stakes are high. You must invest the time and energy in recruiting, screening, and working effectively with your Filipino web designer. Here are 9 best practices:

1. Place a help-wanted on Onlinejobs.ph that outlines your needs in detail. That will prevent much of the frustration of sorting through applicants who don’t have the experience and skills your company needs.

This is a sample of a job ad for web design:

Experienced Web Designer – Remote work. Available during regular business hours West Coast Time Zone, U.S.

Our family business operates both brick and mortar retail and ecommerce for plus-size clothes for females. For 25 years our brand has been: Your Beauty Is Our Business. Our marketing message is “communicate fashion, affordability, and with integrity”.

Your job is to redesign our current website. Competition in this niche has increased. The user flow, layout, fonts, and graphics have to reflect fashion web trends in 2021.

You must have:

• Three years documented experience in websites for apparel. Provide links to work you have done and a list of references.
• Knowledge of branding.
• Mastery of conversational American English, including what is used in marketing communications.
• College degree.
• Computer, high-speed Internet connection.
• Ability to “think” like our prospects and customers.

To apply, please send a detailed cover letter, links, references, and resume to mybusiness@sampleemail.email

2. Review as many applicants as you can. In addition to the applicants coming in through the job post, you should also go through our database and check out the designers available there. Email then and encourage them to apply. It’s easier to have a big pool of applicants and eliminate the ones who can’t cut it than waiting for more people to apply.

3. Start selecting the candidates to go through the series of email interviews. In their cover letter, pay attention to:

• Did they send a generic pattern reply or address what they determine are the needs of your particular business? Toss generics. After all, you described your enterprise in detail.
• Click on the links to their previous work. Is there a range of approaches? Do their approaches demonstrate an intuitive understanding of branding?
• Did they establish rapport? You will have to work closely with this professional. There is likely to be lots of back-and-forth in opinions about what messages seem to be conveyed by the color or navigation.
• Was their written American English conversational? The tone and content of cover letters should entail a personalized pitch. It should not be totally formal.
• Contact references. Ask about creativity, attitude, ability to accept feedback, and complying with deadlines, budgets, and confidentiality.

4. Conduct the initial series of email interviews. Email everybody. Ask them several questions. This is where you start separating the wheat from the chaff. How they respond would let you know whether they really know what they’re talking about and how serious they are about the job.

Why do email interviews?

In general, Filipinos are not comfortable with the phone or video as in Skype or Zoom. Since this task – that is, web design – does not entail facility in spoken American English, any interview via voice/video is not necessary.

The first series of email interviews (2-3) will be comprehensive. Ask them about their experience and skills. How did they become a web designer? Where did they learn? What have they worked on?

Keep in mind that most Filipinos are shy. Their responses would be timid and deferential in their professional interaction. However, once they have warmed up to you, their charm and outstanding personality would naturally come out. Therefore, you will need to be gentle and considerate in how you frame interview questions. No aggressive or combative interrogations. It is in your self-interest to draw them out. That provides the information you need to make the right selection.

At this point, it is appropriate to pose questions on how they do web design. To do this, you have to be up-to-speed on the fundamentals of web design. You can’t do this without some background knowledge. Ask a more knowledgeable friend what you should look out for and what questions you should ask.

Inform them of the deadline for when you expect the answers.

At the end of the email, let them know that you will get back to them in X number of days.

5. Creating a paid test. You can send a friendly note to those whom you decide not to work with. For the rest, you can propose a paid test. The standard payment ranges from $25- $100 depending on the simplicity or complexity of the paid test. The objective is for them to demonstrate that they understand your marketing needs. It could take the form of a mockup for the website or a mini proposal.

Based on the results of the test, you can select a handful for a second brief interview.

6. Conducting the second interview. This is where you have the option to do a Skype interview or another email interview. You have two objectives.

First, you want to check out if you have good work chemistry with your prospective web designer. Ask about their lives and get to know them a bit better. Do they like sports? Do they have pets? This would give you an idea of whether or not you would fit, personality wise..

And, secondly, negotiate your terms. Negotiate the fee, terms and conditions of the contract including confidentiality agreement, and availability/deadlines.

In the Philippines, unlike in India, fees are negotiable. Surfing the resumes before you even create your job description will give you a sense of the salary range for different skill levels.

The contract should be detailed. The copyright, which belongs to you, has to be explicitly stated. And since you will be sharing confidential information about your business, you have to make clear what cannot be revealed and to whom. For example, provide a list of your competitors.

Let the candidates know that in X days you will be notifying them. Thank them for putting so much energy into presenting themselves in such an impressive manner.

7. Hiring. Tell the professional how pleased you are to be partnering with them. Have them sign the contract.

8. Start working together. Give them their first assignment. Provide them with links to websites you view as effective in marketing. Point out what in your competitors’ websites you want to blend into your website design. Give them the materials or training resources you think they would need to complete the task.

Let Filipino hire know that you are open to suggestions. Unless you do that, they’ll just agree with you all the time just to please you. If they have ideas to make something better or more efficient, be open to it. Good ideas that can improve your website are always welcome.

Don’t forget to communicate frequently, in a friendly manner. Be detailed in explaining what about the draft doesn’t fit your needs. Point out aspects of the work which are amazing but just not appropriate for your needs. To encourage them and as a vote of confidence in their skills, you can offer them a small bonus if they continue to produce outstanding work.

9. Repurposing the relationship. If you are happy with your web designer and you want to hire more people, you can ask them for a referral. They would love this because hiring more people is a sign that your business is growing. And they’re more likely to find someone who is just as reliable and hard-working. It’s to their advantage that they find someone who can help their business grow so they can keep working.

If you want a step-by-step guide to hiring Filipino workers, not just graphic designers, then check out OneVAAway.com and check out the 7 day hiring challenge. For only $49, I’ll walk you through the process of hiring amazing Filipino employees every time. It’s an effective process you can scale and replicate for your business.

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About John Jonas

John Jonas is a long-time outsourcing expert and the creator of OnlineJobs.ph.

Since 2005, John has taught hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs how to profitably delegate to VAs in the Philippines (and get their lives back in the process).

With help from his own VAs based in the Philippines, John has created an outsourcing empire that allows him to work 17 hours/week and to spend most of his time with his wife and 5 kids.

Find John at JohnJonas.com and Facebook.

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