Familiar Au Pair World Recruitment story??

[Nightynight]

I click on loads of Au Pairs, some of them reply yes they are interested (having read our medium length profile).
Then I send out an email with stuff that I dont want to post on Au Pair world, including exact tasks (ie the daily routine of our household), pocket money, travel expenses etc etc

the email is broken up into short lines, and is in english and or french and or german depending upon the language of the au pair.

then I never hear anything else ever again.

Am I weeding out the Au Pairs who are too lazy to read an email longer than 3 lines, or does anyone else have a better Au Pair world strategy????
or does anyone know someone who would like to improve her german and can start in jan?

I am tearing my hair out, current AP leaves today and I still havent found anyone else. Getting a visa for non europeans for germany is now a nightmare as the language test requires good A Level or university standard german.

I'm in exactly the same situation - our au pair leaves today and we have no one lined up to replace her.

I've had loads of contacts, but I don't really hear back after I direct them to our family details. I've have had a couple who are super keen, but then they have restrictions that we can't handle. I do have three potential aupairs that I am talking to now, so hopefully I will have sealed the deal within the next couple of days.

I expect your are wedding a lot out - which is a good thing but maybe you can reword things/restructure a little?

At the beginning of your email write about you as a family - sell yourselves. Who you are, what you like doing etc. I always attach a few photos.

Then say about your home, the area you live. Again sell the area and your home. Sports centres, shopping, public transport etc.

Then say what you offer: their room, what it has in it. Bathroom facilities. Computer usage. Phone etc. All brief but enough info. Then pocket money.

Then get on to the details of the work. What domestic tasks need doing. What needs doing with the children.

Then say if they are interested to email you and you will email a list of questions for them to answer.

HTH.

hi Weegle, I do put all those details, but the order is not so clear as yours - the family stuff is split between the beginning and the end. Maybe it needs re-writing like an advertisement brochure lol.

merryscot, it is a nightmare isnt it!

I suspect that most of them are just put off by the reality of a family with 4 children. Our last AP (the onw who just left after 3 weeks) emailed asking for a photo of our house just before she came. I knew it was a bad omen!

I think there is something about this time of year. I am doing the same thing I do for a September start, and am getting lots of provisional interest but not much followup.

I haven't lost hope yet though - it only takes one.

should I include a photo of the aupair room, perhaps?

If an aupair only wants to look after one or two children, they won't even see your profile.

I have five children and initially I got very few hits on APW. Given that my aupair has nothing to do with my two older children, I edited the profile to say that it was for 3 children (I still mention five in the blurb) and I get loads of applications.

I think an awful lot of aupairs are only looking for London Zone 1. There is no point in trying to entice these aupairs because they will not be happy when they get to you.

hmm I had thought of removing dd1, but she is only 11. AP cooks lunch for all of them at midday, so I thought it would be a bit soon to take dd1 off the children total.

know what you mean about london zone 1. The big magnet here is munich, zone 1. But most of them dont realise that they can have just as much fun in a smaller town!

OK, I have now refined my strategy. I now send the big email (carefully recrafted as an ad bróchure for our family). Then I follow up with a phone call.

Discovered that one au pair didn't reply because her english was so poor (v good candidate though) and another one simply had too much on her plate (lots of stress with her current family).

Am hoping to be able to return to work some time in the future [desparate emoticon]

My strategy -

1. Post all details (even down to duties) on Au pair world (apart from salary).
2. Receive an "interested" reply,
3. Send them a mail, thanking them for their interest in our family and saying that we are looking for that "special" person to be part of our family and have some questions to ask which we attach (around 20 - published on another thread). Tell them not to worry about English - after all that one of the reason for them being an Au pair. The questions contain salary and dates.
4. Sit and wait and wait and wait and wait
5. Out of 50 emails sent, I will get 5 questions back. If they can't be bothered to answer, I can't be bothered to take their application further.
6. If the dates/salary/answers meet our expectations, ring them up.
7. Check references
8. Offer them the role.

Simple but bloody frustrating and time consuming

thank you, that's helpful. I am going to add teh bit about english (and german!) not mattering.

I prefer to ask the questions on the phone, because I get a better feel for what the person is like. But I am getting about the same ratio of replies as you.

'The problem is, that with 4 children I get so few positive replies anyway, that I feel I have to try a bit harder.
It is REALLY time-consuming, isnt it.

Another question: who manages to recruit from Au Pair world, an AP who stays for 12 months? We have yet to achieve this.

It was a long time ago but I'm sure I used eaupair.com and had lots of response.

I did! A lovely Canadian - oh how I miss her but I spoke to her on the phone the other day.

Do you think you won the au pair equivalent of the lottery though, mrsrecycle???