Six questions will tell you more than any sales deck: who actually hires the person and in which country, what the hourly rate covers and what sits outside it, whether they work only for you, where the shortlist comes from, how fast you can switch their access off, and what leaving costs. Ask each one as a show-me rather than a yes or no, because what you want back is a number, a name, a date or a document. If the answer comes back as reassurance instead, that is your answer.
Conversations with an offshore staffing provider tend to run on rails. You ask what it costs, they ask about your business, everyone is friendly, and you hang up knowing the hourly rate and very little else. The problems that turn up later are almost never about the rate.
So here is the list worth taking into that call. Each question comes with the shape of a good answer, because a question you can't grade isn't much use, and where our own answer is already published on this site it's here too. Use these on us. Use them on everyone else you're talking to. A provider who gets prickly about any of them has told you something useful for free.
Who hires the person, and where do they sit?
Ask it flatly. Who holds the contract with this person, in which country, and what is my relationship to them? You want a named business, a country, and a straight explanation of who directs the day-to-day work and who carries the pay and the human resources side. If this answer is foggy, every answer after it will be too.
Two follow-ups do a lot of work. Do they work from home or from an office, and who supplies the computer and the internet connection? And am I ever asked to pay the person directly? If money goes into someone's personal account each month, you aren't buying a managed arrangement. You're buying an introduction, and everything after the introduction is yours to sort out.
Our answer. Your agreement is with our Australian company. We hire the person in the Philippines and hold their contract, their pay and the human resources support behind them. You direct the work and they sit in your team, not ours. How it works sets out the full sequence.
What does the rate cover, and what sits outside it?
Get one all-in hourly number for the hours you actually want, then go looking for the extras by name rather than asking whether there are any. Placement or recruitment fee. Setup. Equipment. Software licences. Time tracking. Loadings for early starts, weekends or public holidays. Annual increases, and who decides them. An exit fee. A good provider names the exceptions before you ask and puts the inclusions in writing.
Then ask what happens at renewal and on what basis. A rate that can move without a stated reason is a rate you can't budget against.
Our answer. From A$14 an hour plus GST for a full-time dedicated team member in Australia, and from US$9 an hour for US clients. Specialist roles sit higher and we quote your exact rate on the call. There is no placement, recruitment, setup or exit fee. Pricing has the rest.
Is the person yours, or shared — and on whose clock?
Ask whether this person will ever work on another client's account. A yes isn't automatically wrong. Shared and pooled arrangements are cheaper and they suit overflow work with clear rules, but they're poor at anything where the value comes from someone knowing your business. What you can't afford is finding out in month three. If you're weighing the two, a dedicated hire against a shared seat at a big outsourcing firm is the honest comparison.
Then ask about hours as actual start and finish times in your own time zone, not as a vague promise of overlap. The Philippines is two hours behind Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for most of the year and three hours behind Sydney and Melbourne once daylight saving starts. Brisbane stays at two all year because Queensland doesn't move its clocks, and Perth is on exactly the same time as Manila. What an offshore workday actually looks like goes through the overlap properly.
Where does the shortlist come from?
Ask whether the people you're about to meet are already known to the provider or will be recruited against your brief. Both are legitimate answers, and which one you get tells you what you are actually being sold. Anyone promising profiles in your inbox this afternoon is showing you whoever happens to be idle rather than whoever fits the role you described.
Then ask what screened or vetted actually means, item by item. Who checked the work history, and did they speak to the previous employer or take the written application on trust? Was identity confirmed? Was English confirmed by a person, in conversation? And do I interview the candidate myself before anyone commits to anything?
Our answer. We recruit against your brief rather than sending you whoever happens to be free, which is why it runs to roughly two weeks from your first call to someone's first day. Work history is verified with previous employers directly rather than taken on trust, identity is checked, and English is confirmed in conversation with our talent team. Then you interview and choose. Nothing is charged until someone starts.
How does access go on, how fast does it come off, and where does your data sit?
This is the part that gets skipped, and it's the part that decides what a bad month costs. Ask how the person gets into your systems. What you want to hear is that they get their own named login inside your own accounts, with the permissions the job needs and nothing beyond that. Not a shared password. Not the owner account. Not a credential the provider holds and you can't see.
Then the test question: if I email you at four o'clock on a Friday, when is their access off? If the honest answer is that you switch it off yourself, in your own systems, in about a minute, the arrangement is built the right way round. Ask where working files live, whether anything is downloaded to a personal machine, and whether any of your client information sits on the provider's systems. Your privacy obligations follow your data overseas — they don't stop at the border.
Our answer. No client data sits on our side. Team members work inside your systems as named users, confidentiality terms are signed before day one, and you can revoke access without asking us first. The five real risks and the control for each covers this properly, and what you can't delegate covers where the work has to stop and your signature has to start.
What happens when they resign, and what happens when you leave?
People resign. Ask who tells you and how quickly, how much notice you'll get, what a replacement costs and how long one takes. Any provider who has never had a placement end hasn't made many.
The stronger protection is one you build yourself. Have the person document their own work from the first week, and a resignation becomes a bad fortnight rather than an emergency. Why offshore hires fail covers what else sits behind that.
Then ask the question people leave until it's expensive. What does leaving look like? Notice period in days, what you're billed during it, whether there's an exit or early-termination fee, what you get back and in what format, and what the agreement says about hiring the person directly. Get all of it in writing before you sign, while it still costs nothing to negotiate.
Our answer. An initial three month contract, then month to month, with no exit penalties and no exit fee. If it's clearly wrong by day five, that first week is refunded. After that a replacement costs nothing.
None of these questions are clever, and that's the point. What you're really grading isn't the answer so much as its shape — whether you get a number, a name, a date and a document, or whether you get reassurance. Reassurance is what a provider offers when the specifics don't help them. If you'd like to run the list on us, that's what the discovery call is for, and you're welcome to bring someone else's answers with you.
Who keeps your access list and process notes current
Almost everything this checklist protects — named logins, permissions that match the job, process notes that are still true, a clean handover when someone leaves — is somebody's ongoing job to maintain. In a small business it is usually nobody's, which is why it quietly falls apart between other work. It is exactly the sort of thing an administration assistant does well.
- Keeps the access register current — every system, every named user, the permission level, when it was granted and by whom
- Runs a monthly check for logins nobody has used and flags them to you for removal
- Keeps the process notes up to date as the work changes, so a resignation is an inconvenience rather than an emergency
- Prepares payment runs and supplier bank detail changes for you to verify and release
- Keeps working files inside your systems rather than on a desktop, so nothing walks out with anyone
- Granting and revoking access — you hold the admin account and the password manager
- Releasing money, and verifying any change to bank details by phone on a number from your own records
- Anything that needs your licence, your registration or your signature
- Which provider you sign with, and on what terms
Frequently asked questions
How do I check that an offshore staffing company is legitimate?
Is a three month minimum term normal for offshore staffing?
Can I hire my offshore assistant directly once the contract ends?
Who signs the confidentiality agreement, the provider or the assistant?
How do I compare quotes from two offshore staffing providers?
Do I need to tell my clients that some of my work is done overseas?
- OAIC — Australian Privacy Principles — Privacy obligations continue to apply to personal information disclosed to an overseas recipient (APP 8).
- Australian Cyber Security Centre — Essential Eight — Restricting administrative privileges and scoping access to what a role needs is a baseline control.
Laarni has six years of virtual staffing HR management experience, specialising in real estate, digital marketing and e-commerce, with a proven track record recruiting top talent and implementing effective HR strategies. At StaffingSolutions.io she owns the recruitment standards, onboarding and the people side of every placement, which is why support does not stop at the end of week one.
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