Tip #5: A great nanny will interview you!

Over the years, we’ve found that a great nanny comes with their own questions, because it’s equally important that the family is a good fit for them, not just that they are a good fit for the family.

A great nanny will want to ensure it’s a really good personality match and that they feel they can work well with the family. They’re going to have questions, for example, about what the child’s interests are, how you envision a typical day of nanny care happening, what your preferred methods of discipline are, and what some of your parenting philosophies are.

Chances are, if a nanny starts to interview you a little bit as well, that is the mark that they are confident in their abilities, they know what they are looking for in the next family, and they’re probably a pretty skilled (and great) nanny!

Tip #6: Trust your gut!

We can’t emphasize this enough. So many parents ask, “How will I know when it’s right?”, “Something wasn’t quite right but I don’t know what it is!”, “Should I move on?”, “Should I move forward?”.

The correct answer is, always trust your gut. If somebody was fantastic and you just have the strong sense they’re the one, run with that.

If you interviewed someone and you feel like, “I don’t know what it is, I can’t really put a name to what I’m feeling but something is just rubbing me the wrong way”, trust your gut, go with that feeling, and move on to the next candidate.

You have an intuition for a reason. Let it serve its purpose and help to guide you!

Tip #7: Consider a working interview

This can be a fantastic third step after you invite a candidate into your home for a meet and greet. If your initial meeting with the nanny went well, have the nanny back for a paid working interview. This could look like several hours of their time that you pay them for, of course.

During a working interview, you’ll want to spend some time on-boarding the nanny briefly. Give them a tour of the house, tell them any important facts about any food or medicine allergies, or your child’s communication styles that are important, basically how to navigate around the house successfully.

After you give the nanny a tour of your house, you’ll want to sit down and chat for a while, maybe do an extended hand-off, and get the kids and the nanny started on an activity, for example. Hang out for a while until you can see things are going well enough that you can kind of step back, stay at the house but maybe just don’t be right there, so that the nanny can really take over, but you can keep an ear out a little bit to see how things are going.

As the working interview is wrapping up, ask the nanny for their feedback. Make sure to leave a little bit of time to sit down with your nanny, chat about how things went, and hear what their feelings are. If you want to offer them the job at that point, go for it.

You can make a verbal offer like this: “Hey, this working interview went really well. I’d like to send you an email with a job offer after we wrap up here.” No matter how you are feeling about the nanny, make sure that when your nanny leaves the working interview, you both know what the next steps are.

After the nanny leaves, communicate with your children about what they liked or didn’t like about the nanny. Did things work well for your children? Of course, take what they say with a grain of salt, nobody is going to totally replace mom and dad! But it’s a really good sign if your children are of the age that they can communicate with you. If you hear, “Hey, things were great, we would love this nanny to come back and play with us again!”, that is a winner!

So, get your children’s feedback if they’re old enough to be able to do so, and let them weigh in on things too.

Tip #8: Don’t sit around on a good nanny

By sitting around, we mean this: if you met a nanny and are feeling optimistic about working with them, chances are other families are going to think they’re a great nanny too. 
Most nannies are going to be interviewing with multiple families at the same time, so you’re probably not the only family that they’re considering working with.

So, if you meet a great nanny, just know they’re shopping around with other families as well, and make that job offer if they’re fantastic. It happens all the time: families say, “Oh, this person’s great, but maybe I want to interview another person.” That’s fine, but just keep in mind you could lose out on a great nanny. 

So, if you do want to make that job offer, go for it and don’t delay!

It doesn’t have to be anything formal. You could start by making a verbal offer and just say, “Hey, we would really love to work with you, we’ll send an email message later to confirm the details, but what do you think? Are you interested in working with our family?”.  

It’s really heartbreaking when a family says, “Yes, we want to work with this nanny, we’re going to make them a job offer”, and they wait just a touch too long and lose out to another family. That is a tough pill to swallow, so don’t let that be you.

You want to make an informed decision, but also trust your gut and go with the information that you have. If you have a great nanny you’ve interviewed and want to work with, let them know as soon as possible, so that you don’t lose out to another family!

That’s it for Tips #5 through #8 for interviewing your nanny. 

In summary, we covered:

#5: A great nanny will interview you
#6: Trust your gut
#7: Consider a working interview 
#8: Don’t sit around and wait

We hope this information was helpful as you navigate how to interview nannies for your family.

When it comes to interviewing nannies, one of the first questions parents ask is what format the interview should take. There are no right or wrong answers, but here is what typically works well and what we generally recommend.

We recommend starting out with a phone interview. If that initial phone interview goes well, invite the candidate over to your home to do an in-person interview. If possible, have the children present so you can see how the nanny interacts with them as well. So, without further ado, here are our first four tips for interviewing nannies.

Tip #1: Ask open-ended insightful questions that will give you an idea of who your nanny is as a care provider

Here are some example questions:

“What did you love about your previous nanny or sitter positions?” 

“Tell me how you believe you can impact a child’s life?”  

“What sets you apart from other childcare providers?” 

“Describe how you envision the nanny’s role within the family” 

“Why are you leaving your current position?”

“Describe your parenting philosophy or your approach to care”

“Describe a difficult situation that you’ve had with a parent and how you handled that”

“Describe an ideal day as a nanny”

 “What types of activities do you like to do with your nanny kids?”

Tip  #2: Ask your nanny questions that are completely unrelated to child care

This might sound a little bit off, but trust us on this one. These types of questions will give you some really valuable insights, as to who your nanny is as a person, what their personality traits might be, and what their value systems are.

Examples of these types of questions could include:

 “If you were given a million dollars, what would you do?”

 “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

 “If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and who would you take with you?”

“Do you have a favorite quote, what is that?”

“What are your hobbies and how do you like to spend your downtime?”

“If you could attend the concert of any musical artist past or present, who would you want to see?”

“What would you tell your 5 or 10-year-old self today, if you could go back in time and deliver a message?”

These questions might seem a tad bit silly, but trust us on this one. These are going to give you some really valuable insights into your nanny’s personality traits, values, all things that are not able to be written and spelled out on a resume.

You’re going to get a sense if your nanny can think on their feet, be flexible, those kinds of things. So give it a try and see what you think. We guarantee you will find that you get some really insightful information from these types of questions. 

And remember, a good personality match is really hard to find and really key to having a successful nanny family relationship.

Tip #3: Don’t forget to ask these important nuts and bolts questions about day-to-day workings with your nanny

Examples of these questions could include:

“Are you willing to sign a contract?”

“Are you able to be paid legally and have taxes withheld?”

 “How long are you able to commit to staying with our family, assuming everything is going well?”

“Are you up to date on your immunizations and vaccinations?”

“Tell me what you’re doing to keep yourself safe with COVID?”

“How do you communicate best?”

Tip #4: Make sure to evaluate those non-verbal communications

So, this could be their level of promptness in responding to messages.

This could be punctuality, this could be how well did they interact with and engage with your child. 

This could be mindfulness, maybe they came right in and popped their shoes off right away or they asked what your preference was!

You’ll also want to make sure to think about, did they seem generally happy to be there?

Do they seem to genuinely love working with children?

That’s it for the first part of our top tips, where we covered Tips #1 through #4 for interviewing your nanny.

These tips included asking insightful open-ended questions, asking questions that are completely unrelated to child care, covering those nuts and bolts questions about the day-to-day workings, and also making sure to evaluate those non-verbal communications with your nanny.

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