How to Write a Job Description That Attracts Top Filipino Talent

Most overseas employers write a job description for their home market, paste it into Jobstreet or LinkedIn Philippines, and wait. Then they get applications that don’t quite match what they had in mind, and wonder what went wrong.

The issue usually isn’t the talent pool. The Philippines has deep, educated, competitive talent across a huge range of functions. The issue is that the job description wasn’t written for the market. Filipino candidates read job postings differently from Australian or American candidates — they’re looking for different signals, prioritising different information, and making decisions based on factors that many overseas employers simply don’t include.

Here’s what actually works.

Get the Job Title Right First

Creative job titles don’t travel well. “Customer Happiness Champion” and “Growth Ninja” might work internally or in certain US startup cultures — in the Philippines they create confusion and perform poorly in search. Candidates use standard keywords to find roles, and if your title doesn’t match what they’re searching for, your posting simply won’t appear.

Use the market-standard title. If your internal title is something different, use the conventional title in the posting and clarify the internal name in the description. Also be explicit about seniority. “Marketing Manager” and “Senior Marketing Manager” attract different candidates, signal different compensation ranges, and set different expectations about what the role actually involves. Vague titles produce mixed shortlists.

Put the Salary In

This is the single biggest mistake overseas employers make in the Philippine market: leaving compensation out of the job description.

Filipino professionals who are currently employed — meaning the better candidates, the ones with options — won’t apply if they can’t gauge whether the move makes financial sense. They’re not going to sit through two rounds of interviews only to find the offer is below what they’re making now. Including a range removes that barrier.

Use monthly figures, not annual — that’s how the market thinks. Be realistic with the range; a spread of PHP 20,000 to PHP 80,000 for a single role tells candidates you don’t really know what the role is worth. And if total compensation includes meaningful allowances or benefits that lift the package above base, say that clearly.

Write Responsibilities Around Outcomes, Not Tasks

There’s a particular kind of job description that reads like a list of things someone will be asked to do each day. Handle tickets. Respond to emails. Attend meetings. Update the CRM. It describes activity, not work — and it doesn’t tell a strong candidate anything about whether the role is interesting, important, or growing.

Strong candidates in the Philippines are evaluating whether a role offers genuine scope and a path forward. Write responsibilities around what the person will own and what success looks like. “Own the tier-1 support queue, targeting under-two-hour first response times” is more useful than “respond to customer support emails.” “Lead the monthly financial reporting cycle end-to-end” tells a candidate more about the role than “prepare reports.”

Six to eight well-written bullets beats fifteen generic ones. If every bullet could apply to every job in the category, rewrite them.

Be Honest About Requirements

Long requirements lists do real damage to candidate pools in the Philippines — particularly among women and candidates from non-elite institutions, who tend to self-screen out if they don’t meet every item, even when most of the requirements are aspirational rather than essential.

A clean approach: separate the genuine must-haves from the nice-to-haves. “What we need” and “what would make you stand out” is a format that works well here. It signals that you’ve thought about the role clearly and you’re actually open to a range of profiles — not just someone who ticks every box on a list you wrote in fifteen minutes.

Also avoid credential inflation. If you’re hiring a bookkeeper, requiring a CPA for a role that doesn’t actually need one narrows your pool without improving the quality of hire. And skip the generic character requirements — “team player,” “self-starter,” “strong work ethic” — they add nothing and candidates have seen them ten thousand times.

The Benefits Section Actually Gets Read

In a lot of Western markets, the benefits section is the last paragraph that nobody reads carefully. In the Philippines, people read it closely — and what’s there (or missing) shapes how seriously they take the role.

HMO coverage is the big one. Private health insurance on top of the mandatory PhilHealth is a standard expectation among professional-level candidates, and whether coverage extends to dependants matters enormously to employees with families. If you offer it, say so clearly. If you don’t, you’re already at a disadvantage against employers who do.

Beyond HMO: leave above the statutory five-day minimum, transportation or communications allowances, learning and development budget, performance bonuses with actual criteria rather than vague discretionary language. These are the things that differentiate an offer in a competitive market.

Don’t list SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG contributions as benefits. They’re legal requirements. Leading with them signals that you haven’t thought much about the total package.

If you’re offering an office environment in a professional co-working space in Makati or Cebu, mention it. A lot of Filipino professionals genuinely prefer structured office work over full-time remote — for practical reasons as much as social ones. “Professional office in Cebu IT Park” is a selling point, not a negative.

The Company Description Needs to Do Real Work

For a Filipino candidate evaluating an overseas employer they’ve never heard of, the company description is where trust either gets built or doesn’t. “We are a fast-growing company committed to innovation and excellence” does nothing. Most candidates have read that exact sentence in dozens of other postings.

Be specific. What does the company actually do? Who are its customers? How big is the team, and how many are based in the Philippines? What does the Philippine team actually own — and is it genuinely important work, or is it clearly a satellite function? What’s something real and honest about the culture or the way the team operates?

The candidates you most want to hire are evaluating whether this is a company worth giving their career time to. Give them something real to evaluate.

Formatting and Where to Post

Jobstreet, LinkedIn, Kalibrr, and Indeed Philippines are the main platforms. Each has its own formatting, but some things apply everywhere: use section headings so the description is scannable, keep the total length in the 600–900 word range (longer and engagement drops off sharply), and end with a clear call to action — what should the candidate do to apply, and what does the process look like?

If the role can be based in either Manila or Cebu, say so. It meaningfully widens your candidate pool without much downside, and the two cities have different talent concentrations depending on the function.

One More Thing

The Philippines consistently ranks among the top countries globally for gender parity — it’s one of the most equal professional talent markets in Asia. Write job descriptions that reflect that. Avoid gendered language, skip the age references, and don’t build in signals that suggest a particular type of candidate beyond what the role genuinely requires. You’ll attract a better pool, and it’s just the right way to approach hiring.

If you’re building a Philippine team and want help with recruitment, role scoping, or access to a professional office environment that makes your offer more competitive, The Company works with overseas employers across exactly these challenges. Get in touch and we’ll walk you through how we work.