Care.com -- what should I expect

[Pevensie]

So I'm nanny searching on care.com (which, by the way, makes me feel like a skeevy old lady trying to pick up college girls on the internets during my lunch hour).

For others who have been down this path -- how many candidates/responses did you get, and how many people did you have to interview to find someone worth hiring?  Like should I be trying to meet with 3 people or 5 or 15? 

[somebabiesmom]

I'm no help (sorry), but I'm curious to know this, too. We don't have any babysitters (except MIL, but she has to cancel 8x out of 10) and I've been looking at care.com.

[ellabee]

I used care.com to find a part time nanny before our daycare had a full time opening for DD. After I posted the job, I probably got 15 or so responses. I looked through everyone's profiles and some I ruled out right away. Others I emailed back with a summary of what I was looking for and more details about my expectations. I said if that sounded like something they were interested in, we would interview them in person.

We interviewed 4 over 3 days and then picked one. I would shoot to meet with a couple, unless you really just click with one and know you don't have to de any more. Good luck!

[twinmomma]

We got something ridiculous, like 30+ responses. But, I'm convinced it was because a ton of them were like "OMG. Twins! That's so cute!!!" so most of them were nixed right away. I actually had better luck hunting down people on there myself, instead of waiting for applicants. The two people we interviewed didn't even apply, I just found them based on the qualifications I was looking for. I did probably a half dozen quick phone interviews, then 2 in person interviews, then had the one we liked best come to the house for a half day to play with them and see how it went.

[sugarcraze]

My hubs usually stays home, but for the past year, he's been working outside the house 5 days a week. We used care.com and had pretty good luck with it. I did it both ways - posted a position, and searched for people. We probably interviewed 3 or 4 and picked one of them. I always say, the more you have, the better. And like others have said, if you get a lot of people applying to the position, you can weed them out pretty quickly just through the messages after and then interview a few.

Good luck! We've had really good results with finding somebody, so the site is definitely worth it!

[ladylonghorn]

We have had nannies for many years and found most of them through care.com. In my experience, you need to be prepared with your approach. I have typically had a pretty good response except for just this last month, but I attribute that to the fact that it's mid-school year AND I need some weird hours.

The approach I've uses is to screen the resumes and do a response to candidates saying you are reviewing resumes and will be selecting candidates to do an initial phone interview with. Then I pick which ones I want to do that phone interview with. I use the phone interview to get an initial sense of the person and decide if I think I want to meet them in person. Then I down select a bit and schedule in person interviews at a local starbucks. Then from there, I select the top 2-3 to do an in person interviewe where I have them come to the house and meet the kids.

You will get some crazies, so I found this process helps to weed them out in an efficient way. I've also met with people at starbucks and said "hell no do I want this person in my house". When I do that first in person interview, I ask a lot of situational questions "tell me about a time when you had an emergency in a previous child care situation. what happened and how did you handle it". I find those situational questions are really key. The interview at the house is just to get an view of how they interact with the kids. Lastly, be sure to have on paper your ultimate agreement (pay, time off, holidays, etc). Just makes it better in the long run.

Good luck!

[queenbabee]

Jan 29, 2015 23:17:34 GMT -5 Pevensie said:

So I'm nanny searching on care.com (which, by the way, makes me feel like a skeevy old lady trying to pick up college girls on the internets during my lunch hour).

For others who have been down this path -- how many candidates/responses did you get, and how many people did you have to interview to find someone worth hiring?  Like should I be trying to meet with 3 people or 5 or 15? 

This is hilarious! Especially since so many are bad car selfies. No help to offer, but I am also curious. Good luck!

[aylafsu1881]

I used it to find a nanny for 2 days a week for LO when I went back to work. I combed through the possibilities and choose 3 to interview. I choose 2 that were older and one that was younger (28 ish). I got eferences from them and called to check on how they knew/felt about them.
I thought I would love the older women but one gave me bad vibes. I felt like something was off with her. My H and I actually went with the younger girl who worked at a church DC and worked with 3-4 year olds in the past. She was very down to earth and we ended up meshing well with her. Overall she was great and we used her for 6 months until I went back to work full time and LO went to DC. I liked that care.com gave you a background check and information on the people.

[k3am]

We've used it to find one-off babysitting services when we're out of town. Because we were out of town, we'd skip through and find our top 4-5 with reviews, reach out, exchange back and forth, and find the one that worked best for us via email. No phone calls, no interviews.

Both times we've been really happy with the sitters we got and both times we've been sad they're so far away.

[RiseAndWine]

I had bad luck with care.com and sittercity. Not sure why but I lined up 3 different sitters for different occasions and they all fell through. I have had great luck with sittingaround.com though. If there is a coop group near you, you may want to check it out.

[minirella]

I hired off care.com. She doesn't start for another week. She is in college but will be working with another college girl (each twin has their own caregiver). I got about 14 responses over a period of 1 day. She is the only person I interviewed. Found out I work in the same hospital as one of her friends and I didn't know him but knew his name (small hospital).

[pinecone21]

I hired from care.com. I got 15-20 responses, but it was easy to cut the ones who didn't even read my ad. You want to do art projects with my 6-month-old? Right. You keep referring to how good you will be with my children when I only have one? I don't think so. We actually ended up hiring the first one we interviewed. She had just graduated with a degree in early childhood education, and she had daycare experience. She has been a great sitter and really loves DD. Narrow the candidates down with your brain and then go with your gut!

[Pevensie]

Jan 30, 2015 12:49:16 GMT -5 pinecone21 said:

I hired from care.com. I got 15-20 responses, but it was easy to cut the ones who didn't even read my ad. You want to do art projects with my 6-month-old? Right. You keep referring to how good you will be with my children when I only have one? I don't think so. We actually ended up hiring the first one we interviewed. She had just graduated with a degree in early childhood education, and she had daycare experience. She has been a great sitter and really loves DD. Narrow the candidates down with your brain and then go with your gut!

Wow, I'm naive.  I just thought people had weird reading comprehension skills.  It makes so much more sense that they didn't read the ad and are just using a form response -- and makes me feel less bad about vetoing people.

[Pevensie]

Jan 30, 2015 9:10:13 GMT -5 queenbabee said:

Jan 29, 2015 23:17:34 GMT -5 Pevensie said:

So I'm nanny searching on care.com (which, by the way, makes me feel like a skeevy old lady trying to pick up college girls on the internets during my lunch hour).

For others who have been down this path -- how many candidates/responses did you get, and how many people did you have to interview to find someone worth hiring?  Like should I be trying to meet with 3 people or 5 or 15? 

This is hilarious! Especially since so many are bad car selfies. No help to offer, but I am also curious. Good luck!

That was the weird part -- maybe it's because I was searching in my immediate zip code where a lot of the nannies are upper middle class millennials, but the pictures were surprisingly good.  Like, I kind of started to wonder if I was a subject of a psychological experiment about skinny girls with long blond hair.  

I think care.com links to facebook now, so the pictures are just your last few facebook profile pictures.