Question re childcare.co.uk

[Alanna1]

Hello all, can anyone explain to me how the etiquette works on childcare.co.uk? Put a job ad up last week. Have had quite a few views, some from the same person. Am I supposed to initiate contact? I've paid for "gold" membership. Can people with basic even send messages? Can they reply to them? Thanks.

They can reply to messages but not send messages unless they have the Gold membership. So yes, you with the membership should contact them if you want to

Them viewing you lots, adding you as a favourite, are ways to indicate that they want you to get in touch with them.
Basic level members can reply to messages but can not send them, they also can not view details like phone number, email address.

So t
If you like the look of their profile, you need to send them a message to start the ball rolling.

childcare. co.uk is a PITA for this. wish they'd get monies from elsewhere. I get the same parents viewing me over and over but I refuse to pay another twenty quid for a month to contact parents who I feel should be contacting me first, since I provide the service.

there are alot of time wasters on here too. All wanting a nanny with no real idea of cost or implications of employing someone. Drives me nuts!

by 'on here' I mean childcare.co.uk ofc.

The ones that drive me mad are the
"I need a school pickup from September" and no other details whatsoever except a mostly useless paragraph on how they spend their weekends or how crazy is the family dog

Which school??! How many days a week? How many hours? Holidays as well, or just term time? Your house or mine (aka nanny or childminder)?

I appreciate that not everyone is sure about sourcing childcare but those are basic requirements - surely they know them!

yes if you have gold then make the most of it and send messages to those you like, include email addy/phone number so that they can easily contact you

i also refuse to pay £20 a month or think £80 a year to be able to send a message where on netmums childcare site its free

I just put - please add me as a favourite or send me a message if you're interested in the position.

You can change the options on your account so that you only get an email if some has added you as a favourite or messaged you (rather than if they looked at you).

I don't mind paying the £20 as I've found a lot of really reliable babysitters on the website.

I added a comment to ours saying "please add me as a favourite if interested" or similar and it got deleted by their moderators. We have gold membership but realise most parents looking for a childminder won't want to pay to contact us.

Agree with the comments upthread about people looking for nannies but being hopelessly unrealistic about what/when.