Would you hire me?

[siwel123]

Recently been told that due to me being a 16 year old male, even with a DBS check, First Aid qualifications and past experience babysitting that I shouldn't try be a babysitter.

I have recently put flyers and facebook ads online, asking if anyone needed my help on any evenings or the weekends for £5 an hour, and lots of people have been saying I shouldn't want to be around kids alone.

Are they right, and should I try get another job? But I love babysitting kids, it fits to my schedule and I make more money then working a proper part time job however I feel i'm getting branded as untrustworthy as i'm a male.

longestlurkerever, hahaha, party entertainer would be pretty fun too.
Could me running an outdoor and indoor play club be something feasible? Like pay £5, and come to a certain place, I will provide lunch and keep the kids entertained for the day.

If you are flexible in the hours you can do you would be a godsend to the likes of police officers and nurses, people who have unavoidable weekend working, it's can be really hard to get childcare at weekends and on bank holidays. Maybe you could try making contact with hospitals/police stations/prison and ask someone to put a poster up in their staff rest area. There are plenty of other people working weekends, that's just the ones I can think of.

The male play worker at DS after school club is possibly the best one there. The kids love him. A friend's best ever au pair was a young French man, he was amazing with the kids.

I think there is a market for this, especially where kids are lacking a male role model, and possibly also boisterous boys (I speak as the mother of one).

Keep going, word of mouth will help you.

Have you thought about mentoring slightly older children? Not sure if would earn you.

I think you'd need to be ofsted registered to run something like that? They do exist - especially in school holidays - but are bigger outfits than just one guy in a hall. If you're serious about building your own childcare business, you could definitely make it work - flexible childcare in particular is a growing market - but I don't think putting an ad on facebook and expecting the bookings to flood in is the way forwards. People only generally want to leave their kids with someone they have a relationship with, unless they're asleep

I would definately hire you if you lived near me. I think the fact that you WANT to do this and you love what you do is a huge positive. Does this come accross in your advertising? Have you made the most of your advertising, so if someone searches babysitter/childminder/childcare in XXX area, you come up?

In terms of being self employed and earning more than other work, you have to take into account not getting work all the time.

Yes, possibly should stick to babysitting in the evenings on the weekend as a goal. I love the idea of being flexible for emergency staff.

Kardashianlove, I think it does yes, I talk about being enthusiastic, hard working, loving kids, willing to help with homework etc etc all for a small price.

Yeah id have no problems with it. Would like an extra pair of hands on a weekemd

It takes a long time to build up the kind of regular customers you want. You need to accept any sensible offers of babysitting work including all the one off evenings and muse the contacts, ask people to recommend you, and hope somebody who likes you decides to then offer you more regular work or recommends you to somebody who needs a regular babysitter.

I babysat a lot at your age, but if I'd said I'd only babysit for people who needed me every week I wouldn't have done any babysitting. As it was I had one evening's work most weekends and occasional mid week shorter evenings, and as people often stayed out until the early hours still made more money than doing a morning in a shop or cafe. In the holidays I worked full time in a totally separate seasonal job though.

Babysitters, especially unqualified teens, are almost exclusively recruited by word of mouth. Without a child care qualification most people will want to know somebody who knows you iyswim

You wouldn't be allowed to run a creche in a hall on your own for 101 reasons - apart from anything you'd need insurance and a lot of paperwork in place, and possibly to be inspected by OFSTED.

We used to have 2 different male babysitters and it was great because they would play football, pool etc and on PS4 with our boys before bed. (We also had a girl babysitter that did so too but many girls preferred the boys to amuse themselves so they could text their mates!!)

The boys were usually more hands on. I would use you.

As you are 16 perhaps do your lifeguard course and then you'd be able to get a job at the local swimming pool running kids parties there as well as general lifeguarding.

Ok, so basically I need to be super flexible and pray that people take me on? hahaha. Do you think people would hire me to be a helping hand over a weekend?

all the best names, sounds like a great idea, good time to say I can only just swim hahahaha. Not bad but not super confident tee hee

Siwel if you want to be a helping hand while parents are in the house that's a "Mother's Help" (call it a "Parent's Helper" if you want, but the traditional sexist but well understood term is Mother's Help).

Yes, there is definitely a market for that, and it might be more regular work. If you are sporty then you can market yourself very effectively in that role and could well find regular work.

Being male is not really a drawback and can be an advantage - it's the wanting total strangers to employ you without childcare qualifications and wanting people to commit to regular weekends. Talking about needing to be picked up by the parent needing the help is also a drawback - for regular evening babysitting it's fairly common, but for mother's help work you'd usually be helping somebody snowed under with multiple small children who might not consider it worth it if they had to bundle the kids into the car to take and fetch the helper!

If you could pick kids up from school on foot and supervise homework/ play football/ prepare and supervise a snack there would definitely be a big market for that, but I am not sure if you live somewhere you can do that, and you'd have to be willing to do short time slots of a couple of hours straight after school (of course it also relies on you getting out of class in time).

Yes, you do have to be as flexible as you possibly can when starting out especially, if you really want to build up a client basis and do a lot of babysitting rather than just doing an occasional evening when it suits you as a favour to neighbours/ parents' friends and not relying on the money.

I wouldn't rquire people to hire me every weekend, I was trying to say I could only really work weekends and maybe 1 weekday.

I wouldn't sorry. Not because you're a male but because you're only 16 and would prefer someone more mature as it's a lot of responsibility. I would go more for playwork or nursery where you have more support around you.

demirose, that would be fine and i'm sure many people feel the same way.

You are 16, at that age I started out by helping at Beavers, Cubs and at a pre-school. I was at college but college was about 20ish hours a week so I have plenty of free time, so I used it to get experience working in group childcare/education/youthwork.

Through knowing children in those groups you get to know parents who in turn feel confident enough to ask you to babysit. A lot is about who you know, who you get to know and them spreading your fame to others.

I am now in my early 40's and I still work with children. It's not easy to find work but if you build up a good local reputation you can find paid work.

Feel free to message me.