When outsourcing to the Philippines, one of the first things you should look for in your Filipino employees is their English skills. We’re not just talking about whether or not they can speak passable English. We’re talking about overall English comprehension, meaning can they speak, read, and write in English and do they understand what they’re saying, reading, and writing.
This is very important because the English comprehension skills of your Filipino staff will affect your professional relationship with them. Will they be able to understand the instructions you give them? Will they be able to read between the lines when you give them comments, compliments or criticisms about their work?
Hiring Filipinos with exceptional English becomes especially important if you want to hire them for customer service or customer support. How they talk to your customers will reflect on you and your business. And we both know that in order to sell, you need to give your customers the best.
Want to know a quick way to figure out if this person that you want to hire has good English skills? One clever trick I learned from one of my staff in the Philippines is to ask prospective employees what show they watched while they were growing up. Did they watch Sesame Street or Batibot?
You’re probably wondering, what the hell is Batibot? Batibot is a popular kid’s show in the Philippines. It’s like the Filipino Sesame Street. In fact, also produced by the Children’s Television Workshop, the same people behind Sesame Street. Batibot is a good show but it may not be the answer you’d want to hear when you want your Filipino staff to have great English skills.
The advantage of Filipinos who grew up watching Sesame Street over those who watched Batibot is their early exposure to good English. The lessons from Sesame Street stuck and those who watch them tend to be better at reading, speaking, and writing in English compared to those who watched Batibot.
Although Batibot is nice children’s show, it was more focused on teaching the Filipino language. I observed that in general, those who watched Batibot spoke pretty decent English, but not as good as those who watched Sesame Street.
There are exceptions to this rule. You shouldn’t use this question as your overall basis on whether your Filipino staff has great English skills. You’ll still need to do interviews or writing tests to see how good or how bad their English is. And if your Filipino applicant saw me talking about this in my blog, then they’d probably know how to answer this question.
I was able to prove that this trick works when I asked the Filipino staff that I have now that same question. I noticed that those who watched Sesame Street had really good English skills. The English skills of those who watched Batibot were just ok.
Again, this question is not an end-all decision maker. You still have to use your own judgment on who you should hire and use other methods to test their skills. But, it’s still a good question to ask.
Note: I just found out that Sesame Street is sometimes being translated to Filipino. So if you want to use this question, make sure to ask if they watched the American or untranslated version of Sesame Street. If they grew up watching the translated Sesame Street, then it’s almost like they were watching Batibot.
John Jonas is a expert internet marketer and has been teaching other businesses to easily outsource to the Philippines for years. You can see John’s video about this article, learn how to outsource to the Philippines, and find tips on how to hire Filipinos from JonasBlog.com.