Our recruiting centers are located in The Philippines, a country of 100 million people where English is one of two official languages (Filipino is the other). In the Philippines, everything from newspapers to television shows to street signs are written in English. If you are familiar with the Philippines, you will already know that it is a country where English is widely spoken, that there is a strong cultural affinity to the US (given historical ties), and that for US companies there is no better place in the world to perform offshore voice-based work.
From a cultural perspective, the United States and Philippines have strong ties dating back to the 1800s, and consequently Filipinos have a cultural affinity for the United States. The result is an ability to be conversational with Americans, which other outsourcing locations typically lack. A few fun facts to highlight the ties between the two nations:
- There are 118 Starbucks in Manila alone (where our offices are located), each of which has a look and feel that is identical to those in any city in the US (the same goes for the countless Coffee Beans, Seattle’s Best, and Dunkin Donuts that dot the city)
- There are more NBA games broadcast in the Philippines than on broadcast and cable television combined in the US (basketball is considered the Philippines’ national pastime)
- Nearly 800,000 people in the Philippines work in the business process outsourcing industry, primarily serving US clients (In fact, our management team was one of the pioneers of this industry in the Philippines, and has led large scale engagements for such clients such as American Express, TimeWarner, AT&T, and Microsoft)
The above factors contribute to a large percentage of Filipinos having strong English skills, which allows us to be very selective in hiring our recruiters. To ensure our team members have top notch communication skills, we use a standardized testing process that scores candidates on the three linguistic categories of Fluency, Accent and Grammar. Any candidate who does not meet our expectations on one or more of these categories is not hired by us as a recruiter.
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