Cross-Border Talent Solutions Blog
In-depth guides for foreign employers on hiring Filipino workers — covering DMW accreditation, workforce insights and compliance essentials.
What to Expect from a Licensed Philippine Agency
If you have never hired through a Philippine recruitment agency, you are entitled to know what a good one actually does — where its accountability begins and ends, and the questions worth asking before you sign anything.
Executive summary
- The licence creates legal accountability. A DMW-licensed agency answers to the Philippine government for the recruitment done in your name.
- A good agency works before you see a CV: sourcing, screening, credential verification and trade testing happen upstream of your shortlist.
- Ask the licence question first. Verify any agency — including ours — on the official DMW register before engaging.
What the licence actually means
A Philippine recruitment agency operates under a licence issued by the Department of Migrant Workers, renewable and revocable. The licence binds the agency to government-set rules on how workers are recruited, what contracts must contain, and how deployments are documented. When you engage a licensed agency, you are not just buying a service — you are plugging into a regulated system in which someone on the Philippine side is legally answerable for the recruitment.
That accountability is the real product. It is what separates a licensed agency from a broker, a Facebook recruiter, or an unlicensed middleman.
What happens before you ever see a candidate
By the time a shortlist reaches you, a functioning agency has already sourced from its applicant base, interviewed, verified credentials against the issuing bodies, and — for trades — arranged practical testing. You should expect profiles that reflect an actual screening conversation, and you should be welcome to run your own interviews, in person at the agency's office or by video call.
At Link Asia, employers are also welcome to observe trade tests live, and every stage from job order to deployment is handled by our own team in Alabang — established in 2006, with more than 8,000 workers deployed since 2017 under current management.
Questions worth asking any agency
Ask for the DMW licence number and verify it on dmw.gov.ph. Ask who specifically will handle your account and your workers' documentation. Ask how candidates are screened and whether you can test them yourself. Ask what happens if a worker cannot continue — what the replacement terms are. A serious agency answers all four without hesitation; we publish our licence number on every page of this site.
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