Hiring your first nanny
You’ve are a new parent and it’s time to make an important decision: who will take care of your kids. After much thought and research you’ve decided to hire a nanny to take care of your children!
There’s probably a great deal of research and thought that went into this decision. If you’re like most parents, you probably weighed the benefits of different types child care before deciding a nanny was the best fit for your family.
Making the decision to hire a nanny is just the beginning of the process. You now need to make a whole new set of decisions: where you’ll find candidates, what you want out of a perfect nanny, and how much to pay. The last one is a biggie…you’re now an employer. That can seem daunting, but by following the basic steps outlined below you’ll be set up for success to be a great employer to a great nanny.
Choosing a search tool or agency
Now that you’ve decided to hire a nanny you’ll need to figure out where to find one. You have a couple of options available to you:
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Word of mouth: Friends, family, and neighbor recommendations are one of the best ways to connect with a qualified, trustworthy nanny. Nannies often rely on word-of-mouth recommendations to find new employment when their current families age out of needing regular care. One of the best nannies I ever hired I learned about through word of mouth! Before you start a more formal nanny search, try to spread the news that you are looking for a nanny to see if anyone knows of someone looking for a new position. Utilize social media tools to spread the message widely. You’ll probably find that a few of your acquaintances have a gem of a nanny to recommend.
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Nanny listing service: If your word of mouth search isn’t successful, you may want to next move forward with searching through a nanny listing service. Popular nanny listing services include Care.com and Sittercity.com. How these sites work is that nannies post a profile detailing their education, experience, and details about the type of nanny work they are looking for. You as someone looking to hire a nanny can then peruse profiles and contact nannies through the website. You can also post a listing of your own, saying what you are looking for in a nanny and allowing them to contact you. With this approach, you can tailor the requirements that are important to you and narrow down the pool of candidates. One thing to keep in mind however is that posting your own job listing typically comes with a small cost. However, it can be a great option for identifying a handful of candidates you want to move on to the interview stage.
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Hiring service: Overwhelmed by the thought of hiring a nanny yourself? Well, you’re in luck because there are a lot of great nanny agencies who’ll do the work of finding one for you. You’ll still need to provide your input on possible candidates, but the rest of the work will be left up to them. Cost is probably the biggest factor here. Nanny placement agencies are quite a bit more expensive than posting to a listing service. Prices vary, but the more experience services can be thousands of dollars. That might be worth it if you have specific needs, or want a certain type of nanny, like an au pair.
Reviewing applications
Next up in mastering the nanny hiring process: reviewing applications from your pool of applicants. The number and type of applications you receive will vary based on the approach you choose in searching for a nanny.
If you find candidates from word of mouth, their application may be as informal as an email or conversation, or as formal as a cover letter and resume. It’s up to you how in-depth you want to get with nannies that have been recommended to you by friends and family.
If you use a listing service, you can see all of the information included in applicants’ profiles. Some listing services allow you to screen potential applicants based on necessary qualifications. For example, if you require someone to have a car, applicants will have to answer that question when they respond to your ad and if they don’t they will be filtered out. With a listing service, you will also have the opportunity to ask for other information, like a resume, or answers to a small set of questions.
Finally, if you go the route of using an agency, you’ll have to do the least amount of work in screening candidates. The agency will present you with a handful of options that meet your requirements and you’ll move right to the interviewing stage.
Narrowing it down to your top choices
The number of good candidates you get will vary on your search approach. With some approaches, like using a listing service, you’ll likely get more qualified candidates than you’ll know what to do with. I once posted a nanny listing on a service and received 40 applications on the first day! Receiving a lot of applications makes it tough to decide who to interview.
You’ll probably want to narrow your interviewee list down to three and no more than five applicants. To narrow down your pool, first, eliminate anyone who doesn’t meet your basic requirements. Remember the example above about requiring a car? You’ll probably get some applicants who don’t have one. They are out of the running immediately, as is anyone else who doesn’t meet any other of your requirements.
Next, look at cost. What are the remaining applicants asking for and can you afford that amount?
Quite simply: you cannot consider anyone who is requesting more than your top pay rate. No matter how great they seem, they aren’t a good fit for you.
Finally, you’ll want to compare their qualifications. Education and experience are important of course. You’ll also want to look at how they describe themselves. Does their personality seem like a good fit for your family? Look for examples of how they’ve worked with other children. Can they show how they’ve supported children in caring and developmentally appropriate ways? Then look for red flags. If something doesn’t seem right, go with your gut, don’t interview someone who looks good on paper if there is part of their story that doesn’t sit well with you.
Conducting interviews
You’re now at one of the important, and most daunting, stages in the nanny hiring process: the interviews. Maybe you have experience with interviewing and aren’t intimidated by this stage. For many people, however, interviewing is unknown territory. The first thing you’ll need to decide is: what questions do I want to ask?
Of course, you’ll want to start the interview by getting the basics. Ask about your applicants’ history and interest in the job. This will give them a chance to warm up. Next, you’ll likely want to transition into some meatier questions. These will help you distinguish the great from the merely good candidates. I suggest using an interviewing technique called Behavioral Interviewing.
Behavioral Interviewing focuses on asking for examples of how the interviewee has behaved in different situations in the past. Have you ever interviewed that had a lot of questions that started like, “Think back to a time…” or “Give me an example of a situation…”? Those were probably behavioral interviewing questions. These types of questions are great for drawing out very specific examples of how interviewees approach situations. Great candidates typically can provide very specific examples of how they’ve acted in challenging situations in the past.
Extending an offer
Hopefully, once you’ve finished your interviews you will (hopefully) have one candidate that is better than the rest. If not, you’ll have to make some hard decisions. It’s a great place to be though, to have multiple great people to choose from.
When you’ve made your final choice, you want to extend them an offer that lays out the conditions of employment: salary, benefits, pay schedule, start date, and job expectations.
It’s a good idea to discuss any concerns they have about the job expectations at this point. Better to realize that the job isn’t a great fit now and not two weeks or two months into the job.
Once you’ve come to an agreement about the terms of your nanny’s employment you’ll want to think through an on-boarding plan. During onboarding, you’ll want to plan to stay around the house for a week or two so your new nanny can shadow you and your day. Over that time you can slowly transfer more responsibility to her. Eventually, she’ll feel comfortable with doing 100% of the care.
Congrats you’ve just hired your first nanny! Once you’ve gotten past this hurdle, you need to think through how you’ll operate as an employer. It’s a complex subject that will be covered at a different time in a different post.