Virtual Assistant Philippines: Hire a Dedicated Cebu Team Member

A founder-run e-commerce retailer called the person we placed "the best employee in 13 years" (Clutch, 5.0). Read every review on our Clutch profile.

We recruit, employ, pay, house and supervise: recruiting against your job description, the employment contract and payroll, HMO and benefits, HR, the workstation and the facility, and a team lead on the shift who handles attendance, coaching and the daily queue. An account manager owns your account and reports to you.

You set the work: the role and the hours, the tools and the accounts the person works in, the priorities and the quality bar. You interview the shortlist on video and decide who joins. Start with one team member and add more.

The person is our employee on one monthly rate, with no hourly meter and no platform fee, so the team member who learned your systems in month one is still on your account in month twelve.

• English. English is an official language of the Philippines and the language of business, government and university instruction. In the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, the Philippines scores 569, 28th of 123 countries and regions, against a global average of 488. Your team member writes the email, takes the call and reads the contract without a translation step.
• A workforce used to US hours. The night shift is normal working life in Cebu. Philippine law sets a night differential and holiday premium pay for it, and both are in every package we offer.
• Labor law you can read. Philippine labor law gives every new hire a six-month probation; we treat it as the second half of the interview. Employment, benefits and separation follow the Labor Code, and our employment practice is DOLE-compliant.
• A deep pool of college-educated administrative talent. Our Recruitment Hub in Cebu receives walk-in applicants every weekday, and runs screening exams and structured first interviews.
• Cost. Clients typically save 53 to 70 percent on the salary line against the same hire in the US; the numbers are in the cost section below.

A full-time hire starts from $1,500 a month, all-in: salary, benefits, workstation, facility, supervision and HR. The one monthly rate also covers the recruitment, the equipment in our office, payroll, the team lead on the shift and the account manager who reports to you.

For the comparison, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay of secretaries and administrative assistants at $48,310 a year as of May 2025, about $4,030 a month before the employer's payroll taxes and benefits are added. At $1,500 a month the hire costs $18,000 a year, 63 percent below that median on salary alone, inside the 53 to 70 percent our clients typically save on the salary line. And the salary line is the smaller part of the gap: a $45,000 US salary is closer to $80,000 once you add payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, recruiting and manager time. A managed team member in our Cebu office costs about a quarter of that fully loaded cost and, with our management on the same shift, gets about twice as much done: twice as productive at a quarter of the cost.

Start with one team member and add more as the work grows. Call 1-888-356-8024 with the role and the hours, or send the form.

An IT services firm has stayed with us since 2014, with customer-satisfaction scores up 25%+ (Clutch, 5.0).

No setup fees, no screening fees, no long-term contract and no minimum team size: start with one team member and add more as the work grows.

There are three ways to hire in the Philippines. The differences that matter are who employs the person, who supervises them, where they work, and what the monthly figure covers.

Freelancer platform

You post the job, interview, hire and manage the person yourself. The person is an independent contractor paid by the hour, often working from home for several clients at once, and the platform adds its fee on top. Worker classification and tax questions sit with you, and when the contractor leaves you start the search again.

Employer of record

An employer of record puts the person on a compliant Philippine payroll on your behalf: the contract, the salary, the government contributions. You still find the person or pay to have them found, supervise them from the US, equip them, and handle the replacement when they go; the person usually works from home. If you are weighing an employer of record, our comparison of the two models explains what changes when the employer also manages the team.

A dedicated team member from an outsourcing company

This is our model. We recruit to your specification, you interview the shortlist and choose, and we employ the person under Philippine law. They work from our Cebu office with a team lead on their shift and an account manager who reports to you. You direct the work; we handle attendance, coaching, HR, payroll and benefits. One monthly rate covers all of it.

These are the steps our recruitment and account teams run today, as written into the postings for those roles, with your part in each.

1. You describe the role. Tasks, hours, tools and the experience you want. Our talent acquisition manager logs it as a job order and confirms the specification with you.
2. We recruit and screen. The Recruitment Hub runs screening exams and structured first interviews, applicants who pass are profiled against your job order, and the talent acquisition manager runs the final interviews and prepares the endorsement package.
3. You interview the finalists on video and choose. You meet the shortlist with your own team and pick the person who joins your account. Nobody starts without your yes.
4. Background check and employee profile. Every hire goes through a third-party background check and a complete employee profile before the start date; the steps are on our thorough employee vetting and employee profile and background check pages.
5. Onboarding with a first-week plan. Your account manager runs a final verification interview and onboards the new team member with a complete file and a first-week plan. From then on a team lead on the shift runs attendance, coaching and the queue while you direct the work.

Every team member is a direct, full-time employee of Staff Outsourcing Solutions, with HMO and health insurance, night differential and holiday premium pay, service incentive leave after regularization, salary appraisals and SOS Academy training. They work on-site at 7F MDCT Building, Cebu Business Park, never from home, in a production area covered by CCTV, and they sign confidentiality obligations and an NDA for your account.

Most roles start in 2 to 4 weeks, depending on the role. Every account has an account manager, every team member works 100 percent onsite in our Cebu office, and if someone leaves, we recruit the replacement and you interview the next shortlist.

Your team member works your business hours, Monday to Friday, on the night shift in Cebu, in your tools: your email, your CRM, your help desk, Slack or Teams, with accounts you issue and can remove at any time.

Management runs on two lines. A team lead on the same shift handles attendance, coaching, schedules and the daily queue. An account manager owns your account: a weekly check-in with you, a monthly performance report, a quarterly business review. Time and attendance records are reviewed before they reach your invoice.

Cebu is 13 hours ahead of US Central time (14 in winter). A 9 AM start in Chicago is 10 PM in Cebu, and the night shift is standard here. Our office is in the MDCT Building in Cebu Business Park, a business district with Fortune 500 tenants.

Our founder, Chris Rush, opened Staff Outsourcing Solutions in 2010 after hiring a Philippine BPO that did not work, and 15 years later the support, data, design and marketing teams behind our founder's own eCommerce business still sit in this office. Thousands of employees work here across a multi-shift, multi-floor operation, the company is SEC-registered and DOLE-compliant in the Philippines, and our US office in Nixa, Missouri is your point of contact. For mixed teams of support, data and back-office roles under one account manager, see our offshore staffing page.

Our facility has a full building generator for backup power. We have multiple redundant internet services running on separate undersea cables with direct routes to the US and beyond. This allows us to have reliable, low-latency service for our clients. See our facilities for the building, and outsourcing to the Philippines for how an engagement works across our other service lines.

7F MDCT Building, Leyte Loop, Cebu Business Park, Cebu City, 6000 Philippines. US: 1738 N Gregory Drive, Nixa, MO 65714. 1-888-356-8024.

On the call we take the role, the hours and the tools, and answer the hiring-model and cost questions for your case.

Then you get candidate profiles, you interview the finalists on video, and onboarding on your tools starts once you choose.

From $1,500 a month, all-in. Call 1-888-356-8024 or send the form.

We reply within one business day.