New to the world of nanny placement agencies?
Why is A Nanny for U any different than going to a website to search for childcare yourself?
ANFU Owner and proud parent, Rebecca Dyk, takes a moment to explain how hiring a placement agency can work to your benefit!
Recruiting nannies is exhausting, time consuming, and can be disappointing to say the least; this is by far the biggest and most difficult piece of the hiring process. Often times you will get your hopes up and think you’ve found someone great, but then out of nowhere, they notify you of a criminal offense that happened when they were 18! Or, you come to find out they have a track record of being sick one day every single month!
Interviewing and sifting through applications take hours upon hours…upon hours. As an individual family, you simply aren’t trained to know every little flag to watch for or how to look for holes in someone’s story, let alone determine a nanny’s emotional stability and whether their parenting beliefs are going to match up with yours…exhausted yet?!? If you only need to be concerned about who you are as a family, and who the ideal person is from a traits and characteristics standpoint, you have a lot less to worry about. Our goal as an agency is to support you in doing just that!
Patience truly is a virtue when it comes to the nanny search, but the waiting game is the hardest part when you use an agency. You should absolutely feel comfortable asking an agency about the market trends. What are they seeing? Where are they advertising? How does your position compare to others? What are the pros and cons to your particular job? We love consulting families on all of these things to help them really understand the lay of the land when it comes to the nanny market.
Once you have met a strong candidate and think you’ve found the one, what can you do to feel confident in your decision? Talk to at least one solid reference yourself, and compare the reference’s feedback to that of the agency (who will have collected at least three references themselves). Most importantly, use your gut instinct! It’s easy to look at someone on paper, but your job is to assess the nanny at a gut level. It’s also helpful to reflect after your interview with the candidate. Some helpful questions to think about are…
- Was the nanny focused on you or the kids?
- What did their interaction with the kids look like? How did the kids respond to him/her?
- Did the nanny come prepared with questions? If so what were those questions about? Did they pertain to the details that are important, or were they about money and things that aren’t the top priorities for you and your family?
- Why are they doing this job?
- What keeps them fresh and energized from day to day?
What do you do if you meet someone who doesn’t fit the bill? Let the agency be the bad guy! Your world is stressful enough right now and the last thing you need is to be calling candidates telling them they are not a fit for you, or negotiating over medical insurance and how much paid time off you are giving. Let us do the heavy-lifting for you!
Remember this: If it’s not 100% yes, it’s a no!
