Interviewing baby sitters

[bnme]

We just placed an ad on Care.com for a sitter to come every day from 7-9am and put the kids on the bus. Believe it or not, this is my first time ever hiring a babysitter!
I have 7 messages already. Do you usually respond to all of them? For example, one person lives about 15 miles away and to me it just seems to far to travel for a 2 hour job that is going to be paying $20-25. Another does not really say much, nor does the profile. The others I am drawn to because of their profile or what they wrote in the message to me.

Do you usually do the interview at your house or meet them somewhere? Do I have to be cautious of it being some whacko casing the place? When do you check their references/background?

I was a SAHM for 8 years. went back to work FT 2 years ago but the kids were in before and aftercare at a center. Now my oldest is going into 5th grade and thats middle school in our district so the centers stop taking them. I am so nervous about this - any advice appreciated!

[hopeful_mama]

I just hired someone over care.com. Personally I did a few back and forths over email first. If there was something I questioned about them I opened with that, like the distance - sometimes they are able to answer them really well. If someone sounded really off, either initially or after emails, I thanked them for their application and said we'd decided to go in a different direction. I came up with some questions I wanted to ask ahead of time, to weed out the candidates and not waste their or my time - especially anything that was a deal breaker. I had another list of questions for in person (some were the same as you get a better understanding in person). I didn't have people come in until I already had a sense of them and whether they'd be a good fit. I got the feeling from the respondents that I asked a lot more questions than others, but I figured that was fair, if someone felt it was too much, they probably weren't the best fit.

Background checks are expensive so we did it with just our final choice; same with references, that was either going to be our final choice or if it would be a deciding factor between two, I figure why burn through the goodwill of someone's references (and spend the time on it) unless we were really serious about a candidate. I did meet them in my home, with DH present, and only after I got a sense of whether they'd likely be a good fit. FWIW, I asked our nanny who was leaving if she usually interviewed in homes or not, and she said only once was it not in a home (coffee shop), and that interview seemed to be very awkward for whatever reason. We also did a (paid) trial day with our final choice (had hoped to do it with the final two but that didn't pan out and was one of the deciding factors).

If you feel like you're getting too many responses you can always edit your posting to make it more detailed. On care.com I got a lot of postings right away then it dwindled; on sittercity.com I got fewer initially but they kept coming for longer. For at least the latter I was able to use ebates and a coupon code and they still offered me an extra discount if I looked like I wasn't going to sign up right away.

Good luck! I am very happy with the person we chose, though she hasn't started yet. We ended up with one good candidate from each site, and a few that I didn't love but would have been decent, dependable, trustworthy choices, from the looks of things.

[alexsmommy]

My suggestions to friends/clients who ask me this is:
1. Screen away from your home. You have no idea if the person who responds is the person they say. No need for them to know where you live and when no one will be home until you see them face to face. Whether they show up on time, how they are dressed, etc can tell you a lot.
2. After screening, call references (I'm a little stunned by how many people don't call references, and ASK how the person knows them and if they have any other relationship with the person "Oh Katie's the BEST sitter. My kids love her! Oh, well, actually, she is my niece and she's never really babysat them alone...but I'm sure she'll be fine now that she's actually allowed to leave her house.")
3. After references, invite them to come to your house to meet the kids and see if you all get a good feeling about the fit.

Keep in mind this person is in your house, which means in theory she has access to all of your information. I tend to be far less paranoid than my DH and completely think getting a childcare provider this way a great option, but I've heard enough weird stories about files being rifled through, evidence of someone looking at files on a computer that they shouldn't be looking at, closets being gone through that I want references AND to see how I feel and my kids feel. I hate to say it, but I've also had one or two clients get work this way, people I wouldn't want taking care of my kids. Inevitably they get fired, but I find myself scratching my head as to how they got the job in the first place.

In your case, the nice thing is the kids are old enough to tell you if anything is amiss in her care of them. I love that my 5th grader called me at work yesterday to tell me something that happened with the nanny regarding his little brother that worried him. I loved it more that when I got home the nanny told me on her own and though she cleaned it up a little bit, the gist was the same and it made me feel she was not hiding anything, even when things didn't go great.

[kit]

This has a TON of information, but I found it extremely helpful during my search.

http://www.parkslopeparents.com/index.php/nanny/hiring-a-nanny-part-1

[westwoodmom04]

I highly recommend "Protecting the Gift" as a resource for both interview questions and how to screen people. I found it an invaluable resource.