Experienced au pair employers - do you look for a particular 'profile'

[LittleNelle]

I have recently joined Aupair World to look for an au pair for an August start and am overwhelmed with responses already. How do you whittle them down?

I have one friend who has used an au pair and her suggestions have been to look for someone who:

• grew up with a working mum
• has plans after au pairing (improving English for a job or university)
• is young
• is sociable and likes sports so will want to go out in the evenings, join a gym, go and play squash etc

Is there anything else I should be looking for? At the moment my criteria on Aupair World are just 18-25, speaks English, from EU/Australia/NZ/Canada but there are thousands of them!

I've had a lot of messages from 18 year old German gap year students too OVienna - I was an au pair in Germany myself many years ago and have a basic understanding of German, but also have some German friends still who could help with reference checking, so I have been drawn to them. A lot have done work experience in kindergartens too.

My youngest will only be 2.9 years when she starts though and there will be at least one or maybe two long days (8am-6pm) a week so I'm concerned about an 18 year old coping with that.

I want someone who will tidy up after themselves and the children and who can learn to work a washing machine, but I'm not too worried about cooking - I will mostly be home for tea time and if not I am happy with pasta and sauce or fish fingers. They won't need to cook from scratch.

Nellie there is where choosing an older sibling comes in. An only child will have been pampered all their life and might not have alot of common sense of living with others, the oldest sibling in a group will have built in skills of tidying up after a meal, eyes in the back of their neck etc. In my experience this is important.

Penally what do your 19+ au pairs tend to be doing with their lives? Is it gap years before uni, after uni, or just because they want to travel?

I've looked at older candidates and many of them have such impressive qualifications, have done lots of travelling and maybe even au paired before, I'm not sure what they'd get out of coming to our small town for 9+ months! Whereas some of the straight out of school ones I can see that just living abroad will be exciting, making a few English friends (I have local teenage relatives I can set them up with), day trips to bigger cities etc.

Will a 25 year old Spanish woman with a master's degree in social work really want to spend her days taking instructions from me about how to cook chicken nuggets?

Sorry Pengilly that was an autocorrect!

Nellie, the Jobmarket esp in Spain and Italy is very very bad, and unemployment among the highly educated is at an all time high. So you either sit at home unemployed, or you go aupairing for a year and add english and a years employment to their CV. They have no problems entertaining themselves, I promise! Trips out, gym, boyfriends and other aupairs to hang out with seems to keep mine very busy! None of mine have wanted english lessons as they have had perfect english to start with (I only recruit Scandinavians). The Scandis are different you will find the best ones in the 19-21 bracket, anyone older makes me wonder what they are doing with their life as everyone tends to do uni and get jobs.

OK, I think I have narrowed my criteria down to:

• 18-22 years old
• good health
• oldest sibling
• experience of toddler siblings/cousins
• some kind of job or work experience
• babysitting experience
• plans or ambitions for after au pairing
• sporty/active
• tidy
• no boyfriend back home
• reasonable English but wants to improve it
• from a small town/countryside and happy to come to a small town
• sociable and outgoing

I feel like limiting it to German and Polish au pairs, because I feel familiar with the German culture/outlook and because there is a big Polish community in my town, Polish shops etc.

Little Nellie we had your same thoughts exactly regarding what could be 'in' the experience for someone much older than 21. I've got a 22 year old Spaniard coming over for a trial weekend in a couple of weeks' time. She does have a boyfriend but so have others (or found them here.) But we'll see how it goes. Her reasons for wanting to come over (improve her English) seem genuine.

I think a German girl, even 19, with strong English would be fine in your situation. We have found we need to be quite direct with what we want; this is hard for me but less hard for DH for various reasons so he sometimes has the conversations.

Oh gosh are you already looking for August? I wasn't planning to start until June!
I prefer:
22-26 of age
active but not too sporty
someone who has a plan afterwards
first timer aupair
not too rich (our home is modest...)
who has some independent life experience
has genuine interest in children
working parents
This year I have a sporty 29 year old . Sporty means he eats lots and lots of expensive protein (meat) and this does not work to the benefit of my children (he goes out to the gym but does not play sports with children as I expected). 29yo means I do not feel very comfortable order him around and he feels more a "lodger" than a "son" as opposed to the 23yo that I had before.

29 - wow! But I can see how you might need that if you had much older children and travelled for work/needed someone in the house when you were out. For example.

Re: people that have lived on their own. We had one au pair who came to us from uni. She'd just developed some bad habits living away from her parents. Her cooking skills had literally narrowed to about two things she personally liked eating and found easy to prepare.

I don't mean to sound negative, I guess my point is I find it's best to focus on candidates you feel you will communicate well with. Because this is the heart of whether it will work or not - will you be able to address any issues that arise? Are they mature enough to accept feedback? Age an experience are not always an indicator of this.

compost how much are you offering? You will need to offer a lot more than average to make up for the level of work and location. The vast majority want to live in London.

I've found that lots of au pairs do want to live in London however there are a few who are specifically looking outside the capital. Probably worth highlighting the benefits that the au pair would have at your home and being upfront about salary and how the au pair could make friends. Good luck!

We are offering £80 per week for about 20 hours work. We also paid for our current au pair's first term at college (£400) but the one before had very good English and didn't go to college. I don't think the level of work is that high, especially compared to other profiles on aupair world (getting children up and to school 5 days a week, and collecting one evening) and only for the older 3, but I guess location might play against us....... How much do others typically offer?

In London we are offering £100 per week for 25 hours, plus gym membership. I'm spoilt for choice. It's worth bearing in mind that the value of accommodation in London is far more (rooms are often advertised for £800+ /month + bills) so you need to compensate for your location with increased pay. I would suggest offering at least £100/week, likely more.

I too am inundated. Ad up less than a week and 250+ applicants. We are in central London and offer £95 for 25 hours plus two babysittings. We don't offer phone/gym/classes. We have 4 kids and we maximise the cuteness factor in our photos.

This is our 5th au pair and we do include photos of the kids with other au pairs and the offer to Skype past au pairs.

We always look for 18/19 year olds as I want someone flexible who I can teach how we do things, rather than someone set in their ways. Ours become like a big sister to the kids and a surrogate daughter to us. It works well.

Our criteria:
Must be totally fluent
Must be 18/19
Must be German, Canadian, Australian, NZ (we mainly have Germans)
Must want to go home for Christmas
Must contact us with a personal message about why we are the right fit, all others are automatically binned
Must be outgoing and sociable so likely to make friends and have fun
I list my kids' interests, they must mention that they share some of those interests
Must eat everything
Must have extensive babysitting or other childcare experience.

I'm sure that there are people for everyone as we all have such different requirements. Just looking at the post above this, I actively discount 18/19 year olds, I only shortlist Eastern European girls and I would far rather that they were around at Christmas so my shortlist and the one above would be totally different.

OVienna
Do you mind me asking who's paying for the flight for the potential au pair to come over for a trial weekend?

She's paid this time. I have paid before and/or paid for their time once they're here. I think it depends who it's most important to. We didn't insist with this girl (I would have hired her anyway) and to be honest I am of the view that if I am feeling unsure to the extent that I want a trial weekend, I'd probably move onto another candidate. We spent £300 to bring another girl over one time and it wasn't money well spent - somehow we failed to get the measure of her/she failed to get the measure of what we needed. If they are shadowing a current au pair it can 'mask' whether they know what they're doing or not. So - don't worry if you can't invest in bringing one over.

However, it seems important to this girl to come over I'm guessing because she is older and leaving a boyfriend behind and needs reassurance that it's the right thing for her to do rather than explore other options.

We will probably give her something towards the ticket but also treat her loads when she's here. We have a good weekend lined up with stuff with us and she also has plans for sightseeing - so a holiday for her too.

Thanks, yes, absolutely get your point about being unsure and therefore probably best to move on. This is our first time getting an au pair and it's pretty nerve wracking for us and the au pair. I'm constantly second guessing myself. We just need to bite the bullet I think.

Our main reason for getting them over is that the local 6th form college that offers English languages courses needs to assess them before starting in Sept. Tying that to a trial weekend seemed like a good idea.

I shouldn't have said I was inundated! We have failed to recruit anyone decent on au pair world. Now there seem v few decent au pairs on there. Can anyone recommend any other website for recruitment?

don't use greataupair - very dodgy (google and find out).

I have slightly less candidates this time, maybe its due to Brexit? I wouldn't worry if its for a September start, someone good will turn up.
Alternatively, a previous au pair of mine said that some people recruit on Facebook au pair pages - maybe that's worth a try.

I wonder whether I started too early for September? I will look for the FB pages.