Work Abroad Without Experience: The Real Routes

Start with the disappointing part, because every other page on this subject skips it.

There is no official list of jobs abroad that require no experience. DMW publishes a vacancy list, and its only free-text filter is by jobsite. No experience field, no entry-level flag, no government ranking of in-demand occupations abroad.

What does exist is a set of published routes and protections that matter most to someone applying for the first time. That is what this page carries.

The one official vacancy list

DMW’s own note is blunt about what the list is worth: the orders are considered active unless cancelled, but it cannot guarantee a vacancy is still open, because an agency may already have accepted applicants. Its instruction is printed in capitals: verify with the agency whether a job order is still active.

The DMW job orders guide covers the list in full.

The route with no agency and no placement fee

EPS, the Employment Permit System for South Korea, is run government to government by DMW with Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Experience is not a gate here. It scores. Confirmed training or work experience earns points, and the published position is that low Korean proficiency can be offset if you are assessed as skilled and experienced. Someone with no experience may still register and sit the test.

The age band is published as a birth date range that shifts each round, and registration windows are short, measured in days, so the advisory is the thing to watch.

The EPS Korea guide covers the registration, the documents and the point system.

What each route costs on the Philippine side

The route you take changes the government fee, and the cheapest is the one with no agency in it.

The USD 50 government-to-government rate is half the direct hire figure. That subtraction is arithmetic on the published schedule.

When the placement fee is zero

Separately from the government fees above, the placement fee an agency charges can be nil by policy.

Section 56(b) of DMW Department Circular No. 01, Series of 2023 provides that no placement fee should be charged to workers deployed to countries where the prevailing system, by law, policy or practice, does not allow the charging or collection of a recruitment or placement fee, directly or indirectly.

Qatar is the worked example, under Article 33 of Qatar Law No. 14 of 2004, published as DMW Advisory No. 24, Series of 2024, effective 15 days after issuance.

The deployment bans and placement fees guide covers the full list and the crisis alert levels that stop deployment entirely.

The documents, free once

RA 11261, the First Time Jobseekers Assistance Act, waives government fees on 10 pre-employment documents. You prove eligibility with a barangay certification, and the benefit may be availed only once.

On those four the waiver is worth ₱570.00. A passport is expressly excluded, and at ₱950.00 regular it costs more than the whole waiver is worth.

The first time jobseekers guide covers all 10 covered documents and the 5 exclusions.

Getting qualified from a standing start

Two free steps come before any of this.

PEOS, the Pre-Employment Orientation Seminar, is free and is the step DMW puts before you apply at all. The PEOS guide covers it.

TESDA is the published route from no experience to a National Certificate, and the TESDA Online Program is free to enrol in. The TESDA free courses guide covers what free actually means there, and the TESDA National Certificate guide covers the certificate itself.

A National Certificate is the thing that converts “no experience” into a qualification an employer abroad can read.

Where the risk concentrates

Someone with no experience and no leverage is the easiest person to overcharge, which is why the penalties are worth knowing before the conversation starts.

Two checks cost nothing and take minutes:

The recruitment agencies guide covers reading a licence status, including the difference between Valid License and Expired.

What this page does not cover

It does not name occupations. No Philippine government body publishes a ranked list of in-demand jobs abroad, and inventing one from job board postings would put a number on this page that no source stands behind.

It does not cover destination-side entry rules, qualifications or language requirements, which every country sets for itself. The work visa requirements guide explains that split.

Pay is covered separately where a destination publishes it: the nurse salary abroad comparison, the caregiver salary abroad comparison and the seaman salary guide.

Related

The PEOS guide covers the free seminar that comes first, the EPS Korea guide covers the route with no agency and no placement fee, and the first time jobseekers guide covers the document fees RA 11261 waives, and the working abroad life event page collects every document the whole process touches.

• All guides
• Calculators
• How figures on this site are sourced