Can someone give me a 101 on first skypes with potential au pairs?

[MrsFogi]

What sort of thing do you ask them?
How long do you usually chat for?
Anything else? As I have realised I'm rubbish - I just start babbling really fast and tell them all about us and don't really get much info out of them - they just stay they'd be fine/okay at everything I ask them about.
Help

I go mainly on 'gut feel' but I also have a list of questions I ask most or all of. Nothing very complicated, but things like:

• why do you want to be an au pair
• have you been to London before? Did you like it?
• tell me about your experience with children. What did you enjoy? What did you find hard?
• how would your friends describe you as a person?

-what are your strengths and weaknesses? And so on. Just to get them talking about themselves, to see if I get an impression of someone who is positive, friendly and interested in children!

Go with gut feeling and their level of enthusiasm. Before I Skype I've already sent several emails back and forth describing our family life, our home, their duties, etc and also asked them about themselves so I view it more as a chat rather than strict interview.

Ones that laugh a lot during our Skype chat normally get offered the job - but then cheerful and enthusiastic au pairs fit best into what we're looking for for our family.

It helps to write down a few questions before hand, and you can glance at the list if your mind goes blank.

I'm not sure how old your dc are, but maybe consider getting them to have a quick chat with the au pair as well. That way you can see how they interact a bit (if they freeze up when confronted with a chatty child then maybe reconsider).

I suppose I go on gut feeling too. I quite like seeing the environment they Skype from as well as that gives a bit of info too, especially as my au pairs tend to be older.

I've done most of the checking before I interview, they have sample weekly schedules, have usually talked to our current au pair and I usually have a couple of questions initially as ice breakers, so something we both have in common. for example my current au pair likes harry potter and we have the studios nearby, so I asked what's her favourite HP book.
Previous au pair had mentioned that she loved our beach photos of the children so I asked about her favourite beach.

I like fairly confident (but not overbearing) intelligent women.

Before we Skype, I ask them to think of at least 2 questions that they'd like to ask.

So I check their reason for coming to the UK
I double check driving status etc.
I ask if they really like playing with children! I don't think our first au pair really did - although she was fab at housework.
I ask what they would do in an emergency, so for example if the house was on fire.
I ask what they would like to be doing in their free time.
If Englsih is not their first language, I check that they are happy to do a language course.
Then I reiterate that we want them to be happy here and ask if there's anything that they are unsure about. We don't do that much with our au pairs at the weekend and I check that they actually want that sort of placement.

If I think that they might be suitable and they are keen, I then bring in the children and let them say hello.

Sorry, haven't answered one of your questions. I reckon we chat for around 10-20 minutes.

Ooh I just did this. Great questions listed above. I also asked what they'd do if a child was naughty or disobedient, what they'd like to do if they had three hours with the kids, and what have they enjoyed the most/found the most challenging with looking after children to date. For me actually it came down to the sort of person me and my husband would want to share a house with as pretty much all of them (I shortlisted 5) said nice, sweet, wise things about working with kids.