Life after a bad you have a less than ideal ap..

[chloeb2002]

Just wanted to put it out there! I was so worried about our current ap starting as the last on was a total disaster!! We have had aps for the last 6 years, some better than others but the last one ... Just didn't work for us.
This girl is the cousin of a previous ap and is just lovely.
So I feel we have moved on. That life will be ok again.. That I can go back to work a couple of days a week and leave my brood in fun safe and sensible hands!

Just putting it out there!

Whenever you try to find someone to do some work, there are always people who are good at it and others who are not so good. It is hard to establish at the interview stage if someone is going to be good or not, especially if they have not done the work before.

Given you have had a 5 in 6 success rate, that does not sound bad. Now after the event, is there anything that came across at interview stage regarding the one which didn't work out, which you now feel was a warning sign?

Not very politically correct.. But I
Will never employ a swede again! I think in general they are maybe too reserved to fit into our fairly full on lifestyle? In fact I have gone one step further and will now only look for german girls! They seem to "get" being an au pair. They love spending time with the kids.. Are mature and sensible even at 18! ... But enjoy exploring and getting involved in a life away from home on their year away!
I guess too it important to know that they have some plans to look around, travel, where and what they would like too go and see!

I guess having an ap is a learning curve. We are in Queensland Australia and have started a bit of an ap boom around here! We started with an English ap as we thought it would be good culturally to have someone from where we come from.. It no. She did stay 9 months and was lovely. But big issues like drink driving were not great!

We find interviewing hard as its over Skype generally, but far to fly over !

I like Facebook. It tells me so much about a person..

Still current girl is lovely. Cheating by getting a word of mouth recommendation! Will have to look again in 6 months ready for when the 12 months is up

I feel the same about Spanish. Id never have a Spanish one again, or French come to that, just picked up ap4 up from the airport she's from Denmark, seems lovely so fingers crossed