Recruiting from the Philippines – What Employers Need To Know

Contents

• Recruiting from the Philippines is very much a growing industry for New Zealand Employers
• Interview your Filipino workers on Skype or Zoom so you can make face to face contact – there is no substitute for face to face
• Employing more than one skilled worker from overseas makes settling in easier for skilled workers
• Recruiting skilled workers from the Philippines through an employment agency is definitely cost effective
  

Recruiting from the Philippines is very much a growing industry for New Zealand Employers.

Employers can go directly to Philippines overseas employment authorities if they wish to, but it’s a slow moving process if you don’t know the ropes and not all of the agencies are working to the same standard in terms of providing a transparent process or a consistent quality of applicant.

We have plenty of experience in overseas recruitment, and here are our top tips and key learnings:

• Interview the interviewers – if the recruiters are inexperienced or new to the industry, they will waste your time and money.
• The regulatory requirements for individual employment contracts are vast and ever-changing. We have a catch-all approach, which we cross check as the first step of the process. Without this, your documentation is sure to take significantly longer.

Interview your Filipino workers on Skype or Zoom so you can make face to face contact – there is no substitute for face to face.

• All positions with safety certification as a requirement for New Zealand are likely to cost more and take longer to fill. Recertification is required for many such positions.
• Filipinos as a group or general culture make excellent employees – and work best in a group or team of several Filipinos and some Kiwis. In general, the Filipinos will work hard and be happy to be employed.

Employing more than one skilled worker from overseas makes settling in easier for skilled workers.

• On arrival in New Zealand, you are expected to meet your new employees at the airport and bring them to their new accommodation – provided by you. Remember this is an enormous culture shift for a very modest culture. Your new employee is very likely to be overawed and a little overwhelmed. Bringing more than one worker to New Zealand and accommodating them together them really helps this process enormously, and reduces your employment costs also. Your new team will settle in way faster if you are able to recruit more than one skilled worker for your business.
• Make a plan for getting your new employees or team to the work site – lots of Filipinos do not drive and those that do will not be familiar with our road rules! The easiest way to go is to have someone pick them up and drop them back home.
•  Conduct a Health & Safety in NZ briefing – these standards may be a little different to what your new workers are accustomed to.
• You do not have to entertain your new employees as such – they will not expect this from you, but would probably very much appreciate some form of induction on life in New Zealand and of course on your business standards.

Recruiting skilled workers from the Philippines through an employment agency is definitely cost effective

Recruiting through a recruitment agency will save you so much time in creating and managing the processes – we have a dedicated admin team keeping pace with all process updates and communication and documentation requirements. If you have one manager on your team (or yourself) spending more than 1.5 days per month on recruitment – it will be definitely cost effective to consider recruiting through a specialist recruitment agency such as RecruitNZ.

We would love to hear from you and answer any questions you may have, or read the most frequently asked questions on migration recruitment!