HOW TO FIND YOUR OWN MARY POPPINS

So you read my last post and decided, “It’s OK, I can learn to share my my home with another woman. I really, really want a nanny.” Good for you! Now the hard work begins: How do you find the perfect nanny for your family?

You basically have 2 choices: find one yourself or use a service. If you’re going to use a service, there are many, many websites that can help you do this. All I can say, is please check them out before you use any of these. I can recommend Nannies4Hire.com and Care.com because I have spoken with and worked with the owners and can vouch for their professionalism and character (and no, I have not been paid to promote their companies). As for the rest of the on-line services out there, I’m sure there are many good ones, even great, but I don’t have any personal experience with them, so just use your best judgment. Also look in your Yellow Pages for local services, which is what I did. I liked the personal touch (okay, and I didn’t really know about the on-line services 10 years ago!) and found a fabulous service in my area to help me.

If you want to try to find your nanny on your own, there are many different avenues to try. After my first nanny left, I thought I’d try to save some money and look myself. I asked friends for referrals, but that didn’t really get me anywhere, so I put an ad in the local paper. WOW! Let’s just say I learned to net out some of the responders over the phone, but still, it was quite the experience! I did, however, find a woman to be our next nanny. In The Caregiver Organizer, there are tools to help you with interviewing, and even a Work Agreement, which is necessary to outline what is expected from the nanny, as an employee and from you, as the employer. You MUST get background checks on anyone you plan on hiring, though. There are services who will do these checks for you. I cannot stress this step enough! (Next week, I’m going to write about why it’s also important to know the people in your nanny’s life as well…stay tuned!)

Here’s my true story for the day: The woman who I hired on my own turned out to have some, well, let’s just say “baggage.” I finally let her go after about 6 months. When I went back to the service who had helped me find my first nanny, I told them about her. They immediately knew who I was referring to. They had interviewed her, but had not taken her on as a client because they had seen some “issues” with her that I had not seen. Lesson learned: Sometimes letting the professionals do their jobs is worth the money they charge. Hmmmm!

Karen