What? 

There’s another stray cat hanging around our house?

Are you serious?

No you can’t keep it!

She did what?  She gave it a rotisserie chicken?

And it puked all over the back porch?

No you can’t keep it!

DO NOT GIVE IT A NAME!

Get it out of the house right now!

No, you can’t keep it!

That thing is still here??? Are you serious?

No, you can’t keep it!

This isn’t one of my fears, it’s the actual conversation between me and my kids over the past few days.  

And here’s one of the actual (slightly condensed because it’s really long) conversations with one of my OFS from the past few days.

Is there anything you think we could provide in a background check on OnlineJobs.ph that we’re not providing right now?

“Hi sir, Actually I have listed that in my To-Dos.”

Great. Let me know your thoughts.

“Hi sir, Here is a draft of my suggestions for the background check pages.
[he gave 8 suggestions, some of which work, some don’t]
I think that’s all. Whoo… this email is too long already. :)”

Is there something in the Philippines that exists to see if someone has committed a crime in the past, or is wanted by the police, or has defaulted on a loan?

“All those questions can only be answered by an NBI clearance.
The hiring process here in the Philippines does not do a background check. NBI, Police and Barangay clearances are required upon submission of job application.”

Could we ask for an NBI clearance from workers? 

“Yes sir.  Actually, we’re already requesting them from workers when we do our address verification on new profiles. We built this in when we built the address verification system.
But I don’t think we should show these clearances to employers. It could be used to steal other people’s identity.”

Great. Can you please create tasks in Basecamp for the [suggestions we talked about which make sense to add to the background checks]. Tag me and Dan. Then we can have a discussion and involve the right people to implement.


I often have conversations like this with my OFS.  I ask for their input.  We have a discussion. I find sometimes they’ve thought through things with the business that I hadn’t thought through. Other times I have insight they don’t have and their suggestions won’t work (we had both of these situations in his 8 suggestions).

What I learned here was the NBI clearance basically IS the background check in the Philippines. That and calling references. They don’t have companies collecting tons and tons of data on every citizen of the Philippines like we do in the US. 

The background data checks we do on OnlineJobs.ph are very effective at detecting suspicious behavior.  A lot of ensuring they’re legitimate happens during our address and ID verification process. The rest happens during your interview.

This is just one way we try to make hiring safer for you.

John