Meaningfully Impacting the Economy in The Philippines: John Jonas, CEO of OnlineJobs.ph (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When was this launched?

John Jonas: 2009.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue ramp up on that one?

John Jonas: It was slow. I was teaching how to hire people in the Philippines. We had made $250 that month teaching it. He said, “I think this job board can make $10,000 a month.”

I ignored it until 2013 because we were doing so well teaching. Revenue that month was $40,000 on the job board. This year, the job board will make $4 million to $5 million. 

Sramana Mitra: How many Filipino workers are on this job board?

John Jonas: We have somewhere between half a million to a million. There’s a lot.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of that is getting jobs?

John Jonas: We don’t have data on that because you’re not hiring someone through us. 

Sramana Mitra: You let people post the job and you let people apply for the job, but you don’t know when the job gets filled. 

John Jonas: This was how I wanted it built. I just wanted emails in my inbox. When someone applies for a job, we send you an email. You communicate with them in your Gmail. Sometimes, we know if someone gets hired. I’d say 30% of them are getting jobs.

Sramana Mitra: You’re making $4 million to $5 million a year based on job postings on this site?

John Jonas: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. What else is interesting in your story?

John Jonas: Back in the beginning, I was paying the agency $750. They were paying him $250. When I found out, it didn’t sit well with me. He ended up quitting and I hired him later. I doubled his salary.

I have 26 full-time people who work for me today. They make between $450 and $1,500 a month. At the low-end, I have data entry people. I have everything in between. I have social media people. There’s all kinds of skills. Anything that can be done on a computer can be done online. The salaries are very reasonable in the Philippines.

Here’s something interesting about me. I started doing this in 2005. In 2007, my wife was seven months pregnant with our second child. She goes to the doctor and the doctor tells her, “You have to go on strict bed rest or you’re going to lose this baby.”

I knew I’m not about to lose a baby over money. I can’t work for the next three to five weeks. I got home and sent an email to the two guys in the Philippines who were working for me. They had been working for me for a couple of years. I’m prefacing that with this.

I said, “I can’t work. I need you guys to take over everything I’m currently doing.” For the next three weeks, I worked for one hour. Three weeks later, she had the baby. The first two months, I worked for about an hour a week. I hadn’t been working.

It was really good for me to step away and just take care of my family. During those three months, I learned all kinds of stuff. There’s always work to be done in the business. It’s a matter of who’s doing the work. Is it you or someone else? For the past 10 years, I’ve worked for about 17 hours a week and have grown the business doing that.

Sramana Mitra: Well done. Great story. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Meaningfully Impacting the Economy in The Philippines: John Jonas, CEO of OnlineJobs.ph
1 2 3 4