For the most important hire you will ever make, the key is asking the right questions.
A nanny takes care of your most valuable resources, your children and your home, and represents your family. You are the gatekeeper for your family, and in many ways, she will become the face of the family.
Choosing the right agency
The first question to ask is to determine which service to use. It helps to get a personal referral. When you’re shopping for a high end car, you go to the best store. This is not the time to look for a bargain and don’t make the mistake of using several agencies. You’ll likely see some of the same candidates. Read up on how they find their candidates, what their screening practices are. Look for a nice, kind, friendly agency.

A good agency will ask lots of questions. They will want to know your personality and the personality of each one of the children, your schedule, what household chores would lighten your load, like running errands, preparing a tasty dinner a few nights a week, or home management experience.

On Your mark, Get set, Go
Your first job is to decide what you actaully need and want:

  • Daily and weekly schedule- full or part time
  • Duties, expectations
  • Salary range
  • Skill sets, like bilingual, cooking
  • Educational level
  • Flexibility–like being able to travel or help with occasional evenings
  • Live-in or live-out

Be as specific as possible in your description
We recommend finding the best personality match for your family and being negotiable about specific skill-sets.

Narrowing down the candidates 

Your Placement counselor will take your Family Application and the information from the phone interview and go through their data base of nannies to find a handful of very close matches. She is doing the work for you so do consider each of them. She may start with 15 candidates and narrow the list down to 3-5 best matches for you. She is looking at the ages of children the nannies have had recent experience with, how close she lives to you, how her personality matches with yours, skill sets, schedule and salary. She is doing the digging for you. When she says, “meet everyone we send you , even if it’s just for 15 minutes”, do it.

Let the agency save you stress and  time. Trust them. A picky nanny agency will  go through 25 applications before finding one to interview. After an in-person interview, a decision is made whether to proceed with reference and background checks. Our goal is that your choice will be based on the best personality match for your family between a few top-quality candidates.

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On Saturday November 3, Caring Nannies held it’s four hour Nanny Boot Camp.

This free course is designed for all nannies placed or being placed through Caring Nannies, and empowers them with greater skills and professionalism and gives families a higher level of care and service. Caring Nannies offers three training events per year, and we require our nannies to attend two.

Nanny Boot Camp is an ongoing event and our goal is to see every nanny have a chance to attend. It covers communication, boundaries, constructing a Working Agreement, developing a weekly Play Plan, using the Nanny Log, improving children’s behavior, consistency, age appropriate activities, child health and safety, discipline techniques, establishing routines, defining your role. We teach using role-playing, discussing typical scenarios that come up and the ethical way to handle them, practice writing out a typical curriculum for several ages, conflict resolution, developing a resume and portfolio, and interview success.

Comments from attendees included these: “Thank you for the time, caring and thoughtfulness that went into your Nanny Boot Camp today. You have helped all of us to step up a notch in our chosen profession. I value that you understand our genuine service and love for the children and families we serve while we carry on that service in a pretty hidden manner and are often not openly valued. I believe we all get that, and recognition, and appreciation are not our motives…. was kinda fun to hear that you ‘get it’.”

“Thank you for helping us serve that much better.”

“It’s great to hear from other nannies and real experiences. I appreciate your kind support to us. Your continued education and conferences equals professional nannies!” and “You’re making us feel valued as nannies. We nannies work pretty much alone and without support.”
We applaud the nannies who gave up their Saturday morning to increase their skills, and connect with us and others in their profession! These are people who keep on learning, growing and stretching to be the best of the best! Thank you for coming! We know there were many others who wanted to come but had problems with  scheduling, and we’ll host another class early next year.

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