Manila's talent pool spans business process outsourcing, IT services, financial operations, and manufacturing. The city pulls workers from across the Philippines—migration into Metro Manila remains strong—and cost structures are markedly lower than regional hubs like Singapore or Tokyo. Time-to-hire typically extends 4–6 weeks due to commute friction across the metro's sprawl and interview scheduling across distributed teams. Raffi, an agentic AI recruiter, handles the candidate screening and interview logistics for hiring managers who post roles to their careers page or job boards. Once candidates actively apply, Raffi moves them through phone screens and structured interviews, calendaring with your team via Google Calendar and syncing results into Workable. The result is faster feedback loops without recruiter overhead—critical in Manila, where strong candidates have competing offers and delays cost placements. For hiring managers juggling role-specific skill assessment across dozens of applicants, Raffi reduces the manual load of scheduling, note-taking, and candidate evaluation, letting your team focus on final-round decisions and offer negotiation.
<60 sec
Application to first contact
10-15 min
Per applicant interview
$0
Hire fees, ever
Raffi calls every applicant for a 10-15 min structured interview. Not just the top 5 résumés — every one. Result: nobody good slips through.
Conversational AI interview, rubric-anchored scoring, transcripts you can read. You get a top 3-5 shortlist while competitors are still scheduling first-rounds.
SaaS pricing from $199/mo. No 15-25% of first-year salary, no per-hire kickback. Cancel anytime.
Manila's 2026 hiring market shows strength in IT and customer support roles, with tech companies and BPO firms still hiring despite global macro uncertainty. Talent supply for junior-to-mid engineers and support specialists remains solid; senior technical roles face longer search windows due to scarcity. Average time-to-hire sits at 35–50 days, slowed by logistical friction and candidate availability across Metro Manila's traffic-heavy commute zones. Remote and hybrid work norms are normalizing, easing some scheduling friction. Salary expectations for IT roles are up 6–10% year-on-year, but remain a fraction of Southeast Asian equivalents in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, sustaining hiring momentum for cost-conscious multinational teams.
Hiring in Manila demands flexibility around commute—candidates may spend 1–2 hours traveling to interviews, pushing many roles toward hybrid or fully remote arrangements. English proficiency is high across tech and BPO sectors, but soft-skills assessment and cultural fit matter heavily given team integration across distributed offices. Salary expectations for mid-level IT or operations roles range 80,000–150,000 PHP monthly; benchmarking against local cost of living (lower than regional peers) is essential for competitive offers. Top-performing candidates often juggle multiple offers; fast feedback and decision-making are critical. BPO, IT services, fintech, and manufacturing dominate hiring; roles requiring Tagalog or regional language skills surface in customer support and operations.
Yes. Raffi operates in 30+ languages and supports candidate calls in any timezone via self-booking — there's no per-city integration. If you can post a role from Manila, you can run Raffi from Manila.
Raffi is calibrated against the major AI-in-hiring frameworks (EU AI Act + NYC Local Law 144) and discloses AI use to every candidate before the call. For Manila-specific work permits and right-to-work checks, those happen outside Raffi — we screen, you verify eligibility before extending an offer.
Manila operates UTC+8, overlapping partly with US and European working hours. English is widely spoken in tech and business roles, but some operations and customer support positions require Tagalog or regional dialect fluency. Interview scheduling should account for candidate commute times across Metro Manila's congested routes.
Remote and hybrid roles attract wider applicant pools and reduce commute-related scheduling friction, typically shortening time-to-hire by 1–2 weeks. Many candidates prefer flexibility given traffic; offering remote interview options accelerates candidate progression and reduces no-show rates.
Mid-level engineers and operations specialists typically command 100,000–150,000 PHP monthly, with variation by sector and experience. Cost of living in Manila is lower than Singapore or Hong Kong, so salary expectations remain competitive. Benchmarking against local market data and benefits packages (health insurance, transportation allowance) is key to attracting top talent.
Agentic recruiting is recruiting done by an AI agent that takes action on your behalf — not a chatbot or résumé summarizer. Raffi calls every applicant for a structured 10-15 minute interview, scores them against your rubric, and hands you a ranked top 3-5. The work happens autonomously.
Most agencies charge 15-25% of first-year salary as a placement fee — a $90k hire runs $13-22k. Raffi is SaaS at $199-599/mo plus per-action credits, typically landing under $10k/year for a team hiring 12 people. Same shortlist quality, no placement contract.
About 25 minutes to onboard, post your first role, and have Raffi ready to interview applicants. No engineering work, no integration project. Connect your work email, paste a JD, you're live.
Free $25 starter credit. No credit card. Screening live by tonight.