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

I Need a Wife, I Mean a Nanny!

Let me tell you from personal experience, having a full-time nanny was AWESOME! Honestly, it was like having my own wife!

So if you’re trying to decide whether a nanny is the way to go, or if you have already decided and now need to start searching, let me give you the benefit of what I’ve learned. There are a few key things to keep in mind

1. The nanny will be in your home, all day, with your kids and your things, while you are gone. I know you know this, but have you REALLY thought about it?
2. She will know things about your kids and see things your babies do BEFORE YOU.
3. You MUST have a back-up plan in case she is sick at the last minute. This is VERY important, and I should know, because I never had a back-up plan!
4. She can make your life 100% easier if you hire the right person and agree completely on her duties.
   

So, you still want to hire a nanny, right? There are many local and on-line services to help you with this. They are wonderful, because they do all the background screening and initial interviews. And they will only pair you up with nannies that fit your profile. However, they can be quite costly.

So if you go at it on your own, here are a couple of suggestions. Make sure you watch them interact with your kids. Always, always, always do background checks on them. This includes a county, state and national criminal check, driving record and a check on the Child Abuse and Neglect Database. You can probably do these online or even through a detective agency.

In By The Book: Caring For MY Kids, we discuss hiring a nanny in a bit more detail. Also, there are outlines for a nanny application, interview sheet, and even a nanny agreement. While the agreement is not a legally binding contract, it is very specific on what your nanny’s duties will be and will not be. It also outlines pay structure, holidays, vacations, sick days, hours, etc. Make this as detailed as possible.

Good luck on your journey to find the perfect nanny!

Karen