HelperFirst, for domestic helpers & employers.

HelperFirst is a project of Canyudo which traces its roots to 2004. More about Canyudo later!

We began in 2010, and through HelperFirst, we aim to break open the recruitment market for its primary stakeholders: the helpers, helping employers make a more informed choice with directly-curated hires. We know our job candidates personally and want to learn your specific needs to help you find the perfect candidate.

We've been working with volunteers and remote workers since 2004 and adapting our customer-service track record of direct communication to the Hong Kong helper Jobs Market was an easy adaptation of more than 15 years expertise in fantastic customer handling!

With customer service experience to over 45 million customers, we want to suggest the following:-

• HelperFirst isn't a website; it is a community!
• Employers don't want to spend hours filtering messages.
• Helper welfare shouldn't be forfeit to the convenience of online hiring.

We are firmly against industry malpractice, human trafficking and forced labour. We support bminimum wage laws, and we support organisations like the International Labour Organisation and Stop Human Trafficking.

We publish online games and have vast experience of the web. We understand that the Hong Kong helper jobs market as typically divided between two distinct player types: small agencies with no website and websites with no real relationships.

We are neither. We are online because that saves everyone money and time - but we deal with customers face-to-face and via the 'phone or WhatsApp/WeChat/Line/Messenger - Employers or Helpers.

We are an ethical agency. We never charge fees to Helpers.

We're also a curated service: your one-time payment gives two years membership, so if something goes amiss with your new foreign domestic worker, then we pledge to help you again at no extra fee. Similarly, we will happily work with you to find your helper a new job if you decide you no longer wish to work together for whatever reason.

So we help you choose the best candidate, and we empower overseas foreign workers (OFW) or Foreign Domestic Workers (FDW) to select the most suitable employer - hopefully, that's you!

Our service

HelperFirst is an online platform working to promote fair practices and advance foreign domestic workers' living and working conditions. By taking a direct personal interest, we aim to empower millions of migrant domestic workers by giving cost-free access to job markets and squeeze out unethical recruitment agencies.

We do most of the work for you.

Following registration, we schedule a call and tailor your job advertisement to suit your family's needs at no extra fee. We choose candidates from a curated list - drawn from thousands of online registrations.

As an employer, You may browse domestic helper profiles to find the helper who best meets your specific requirements and can adapt to your family's needs and preferences.

As a domestic helper, You talk to us first, and we learn what you want. We show you how to find a better job before you break contract or get visa problems. You contact employers and choose a kind family.

We are delighted that you are here. Join HelperFirst community for a more personal experience and honest recruitment!

Why you are reading this, here, now.

We never meant to be an agency for Foreign Domestic Workers (FDW), finding great new jobs for Domestic Helpers, Nannies, Drivers, Cooks, Gardeners and more in Hong Kong!

We are Game-Developers, working on a project called 'Canyudo' - and then one of the team lost his family's Domestic Helper (she ran away from a nasty debt agency before he could find out what was wrong).

Someone said, "You should use (name withdrawn).com - you can choose a Helper on there!"

We checked that site out, but we are web designers, and when we used that site we ended up thinking wow it would be way easier to do this ourselves!

Within one week we had hundreds of uninformative five-word messages, all written by helpers desperate to find a new job. We understood that most would not succeed, so we began considering the challenges from the perspective of gamification, ethics and design.

And we learned about two bad things - two problems which Helpers face in Hong Kong. The Visa Menace and Wage Stagnation.

We got mad about both of these problems facing helpers and even more at the wasted opportunity of the newer' online agencies'.

We exhaled and decided to fix all three problems!