- First 90 Days
- Onboarding
Offshore staff onboarding is safest when it promises nothing
Filipino candidates ask one question about US firms. The answer is yes.
Filipino candidates ask US firms one question more than any other, and a guarantee is not what they want. They want to know whether the hire-and-fire culture is real. It is. Philippine employment law takes security of tenure seriously, and American practice does not. Anyone who has worked under the first reads a US offer and notices what is missing. Week one is where that silence gets loud. Most firms spend week one on tool access.
Is the hire-and-fire culture real?
A US offer carries no clause about what happens when the work dries up, and candidates look for it. There is none to find. The offer says at-will and moves on to the start date. Not an oversight. The deal. So the culture is real, and the people asking about it are reading accurately. The ones who ask are rarely the nervous ones. They are the ones with long runs at every employer before this one.
That question cross-examines the onboarding script, and most firms have never prepared for it. What comes back is a feeling. We treat people well here. Turnover is low. Both may be true. Neither is responsive. A feeling cannot be planned around and a notice period can. I read a non-answer as the start of a job search rather than the end of one.
Nobody fails this by answering badly. They fail by never drafting one.
Why we screen for tenure, then place into a market that promises none
Average tenure per employer is the screen. Total years worked, divided by the number of employers. Above four years per company is the line worth acting on. The screen is arithmetic, not judgment. A resume carries both numbers and almost nobody divides them. Skills predict month one. Tenure predicts whether month eighteen happens at all. Nobody builds a record like that by accident. He builds it by reading each employer carefully before he signs.
So here is the tension, and I am not going to smooth it out. We select hard for people who stay. Then we place them into an arrangement that commits to nothing about keeping them. The trait behind the long tenure is the trait behind the question. That is one trait, not two. He is not going to read a US offer any more loosely than he read the ones before it. A firm that hires for the first and bristles at the second has misunderstood what it bought.
What offshore staff onboarding never says out loud
The onboarding deck covers systems and stops short of employment terms. Tool access, the case management login, a calendar invite. Then a warm line about how the firm values its people. A firm's caseload moves. A contingency matter settles. A practice area goes quiet for two quarters, and payroll follows the docket rather than leading it. No managing partner can sign a guarantee against work he does not control. A promise like that is worth less than silence, because it breaks where everyone can see it.
But nobody asked for a guarantee. The question is what the firm does when the work thins. That has an answer, even when the answer is unwelcome. Say the notice period. Say who makes the call. Say whether the role is tied to one matter or to a practice area. Not a policy. A disclosure. It fits in a paragraph. A hire told the truth in week one can plan around it. A hire told nothing plans anyway.
What a firm gets for answering the question early
Answering early buys the month eighteen that the tenure screen was selecting for. Law firms report staffing pressure and headcount movements year after year, and the Thomson Reuters Institute collects it. Nobody inside a US firm thinks headcount travels in one direction only. The candidate does not think so either. Pretending otherwise during onboarding is the one part of the process he can already check.
What changes with the disclosure is what the hire does in the gaps. Someone who knows the terms escalates early. He writes the process down. He asks whether the matter he supports is winding up. Someone who suspects the terms and cannot confirm them does none of that. He goes quiet. He keeps his options warm. The cost of the silence is paid in work product, months before it is paid in a resignation. Answer it in week one, where it costs a paragraph. In month nine it costs the hire.
Draft the paragraph.
People also ask about this
What should a US firm actually say about at-will employment during onboarding?
Does answering the question honestly cost a firm good candidates?
Why do Filipino candidates ask about hire-and-fire culture more than other things?
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