At Satellite Office, we’ve built a body of experience around interviewing potential employees to find the best talent for your remote customer support offshore team. Our team of recruitment experts has specialist knowledge across different industries and roles including Marketing, Accounting, HR, Customer Service, and IT to make sure you get the best candidate for any given role for your budget.
There are some differences when hiring in the outsourcing company in the Philippines. Our specialist Recruitment Team is on hand to advise and support you the whole way to ensure you get the right candidate. Here are some common questions that our clients ask about conducting interviews.
How many interviews should I conduct?
We generally recommend that you conduct at least two interviews.. The first interview allows you to get an introduction to the candidates and to then make a shortlist of the people most suited to your position. The second interview gives you the chance to conduct more in-depth questioning to ensure the candidate is the right fit for you.
It’s also possible to combine both interviews into one panel interview if you have multiple interviewers from your company, just as long as you allocate enough time for everyone on your panel to interview the candidate and enough time to cover all items on their interview lists.
Can I get the candidate to do an initial screening exercise to help showcase they have the skills for the role?
Yes, this is a good idea and something we recommend. Our Recruitment Team have experience implementing screening and skills tests for a wide range of roles across different industries. We can advise you on what types of exercises and tests you can implement, or we can use your own testing if you already have something in place. Exercises are recommended to not run for longer than two hours and are best done at our Manila site where the exercises can be supervised.
What type of questions should I ask candidates?
You should ask the same questions that you would ask recruiting for your role in your local market. Some examples: Why do you want to work here in the role for this company? Why do you think you are qualified for this role? What are your short and long-term goals? What are the top three accomplishments in your career?
You also need to add your role-specific questions, and your own personal flair to the interviewing to help you determine which candidate is the right fit. It’s also not unusual in the Philippines to ask for more personal details during interviews, such as what their hobbies are and about their family.
What’s the best way to phrase interview questions?
It’s best to ask open-ended questions throughout the interview process to avoid getting a simple yes or no response. For example: Tell me about your working relationship with your previous manager. You can also ask questions to learn about their workplace behaviors, for example: Talk me through a time when you have used your initiative at work.
How quickly do I need to decide on a candidate?
The timeframes for the recruitment process can be quite tight. It is an ‘employee market’ in the Philippines with highly skilled team members in high demand. If you’re happy with a candidate and want to recruit them, you may need to move quite quickly to ensure they aren’t snapped up by someone else.
What technology platform do you use for interviews?
At Satellite Office, we use a global leading technology platform to manage the end-to-end recruitment process. You get a single view of each candidate who we endorse including their CVs, your feedback and notes on them, budgets and more – this makes managing the recruitment process a breeze. The job interviews are conducted via Zoom, Skype or Microsoft Teams and are typically set up by our Recruitment Team. We can work with your preferred video platform or ours.
The Recruitment Team at Satellite Office are experts at helping you find the right candidate for your role. We’re more than happy to answer any other questions you might have.Â
We work with clients in Australia including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, the US and Europe to help them set up dedicated remote offshore teams with highly skilled staff in the Philippines. We assist clients with offshoring and outsourcing candidates for roles in marketing, HR, accounting, finance, payroll, bookkeeping, IT, customer service and sales.
You may also be interested in learning more about hiring and managing Filipino staff.
