Has anyone used Au Pair World?

Hi Pink, I have just PM-ed you my questions. Good luck with it.

One tip about using aupairworld. You should respond via the site to aupairs as often as you can, even if it is to send them the standard message that you are not interested. Each time you respond, it bumps up your profile in the search results and keeps your profile hot.

Once you put your profile up, you will start getting interest from aupairs. Bear in mind many of them will not have even read your profile properly. Therefore, you still have to look at their anticipated start date, length of stay, even preferred country etc to make sure it matches your requirements.

Some of them may come from countries you don't have much hope of getting a visa for, such as Mexico or such like. I only hire girls from the EU to spare myself any issues with the visa.

You should ask for references. The aupair should at least be able to provide written references from their school, previous employers (such as nurseries or holiday clubs at which they worked) or babysitting families. The best is if they have previous aupair experience. I will try to call up the host family and chat to them about the aupair.

Hi lovely, I have just PM-ed you my questions.

As you will see, it is quite a long list. If the aupair is not interested or her English is not up to scratch (I require aupairs who have decent English), then she will not answer, which acts as a natural screening device.

If I am satisfied with the answers, I will arrange for a skype, largely to test her conversational and spoken English. But as all the heavy lifting will already be done, I can offer the role to her over skype if it goes well.

Aupair world is great, agree with previous posters. Lots of choice, you can narrow down criteria and find lots of experienced aupairs. I wouldnt recommend sgencies.

I agree that au pair world is better than agencies as you have a big pool of candidates to pick from, and you do the vetting yourself meaning you can rely on it more than if it is done by someone else.

I do initial screening questions by message, then schedule a Skype interview if I like them.

The agencies do not necessarily vet the aupairs and you shell out for nothing IMO you could not get off aupair world which has much greater choice.

But you will have to do the checks and references yourself on the candidates you find on aupairworld, which I prefer frankly as I get a better feel for the girls and their enthusiasm for the role I make them jump through a few hoops which sorts out the timewasters and half-hearted.

I used it to find a family when I was an au pair. The first family I found where amazing but I had to leave then the second family was a disgrace. They lied about the child's age he was only 1 and they told me 2.5. I got there on a Sunday they went to work on the Monday morning and I didn't see them again until the Thursday when I told them straight away that I was leaving as they did not stick to the hours. I think agency's are better as anyone can be on au pair world