Nanny Adverts - What gets most replies?

[nannynick]

Having looked at some adverts from parents wanting a nanny recently, on Gumtree... there seeems to be two different groups of parents.

Group 1: Have a very short advert, hardly any details at all. Often just a one-liner such as:
Nanny/mother's help required in country house. Three children aged 4, 3 and 2. Live in or out, car available. Immediate start.

Group 2: Have a lengthy advert, which goes into detail about the type of person they are looking for, plus what duties they expect done... some even list the times that things need to be done such as school runs.

As a nanny, I prefer Group 2, as it is clear what the parents want, but it could put me off applying for the job, due to not matching exactly with the requirements. Where as with Group 1, they don't put their requirements, so I would guess they get more applicants.

For those of you who have advertised online for a nanny - have you found any particular style of advert gets more responses, or better responses. Is having more responses actually useful - as you have to narrow them down, whereas if you specify what you want in the advert and only get a couple of replies - you avoid the initial filtering out undesirables.

As a nanny I prefer long adverts, as parents recruiting a nanny, I suspect a longer advert produces applicants who fit better... so why are most of the adverts the short 1 liners?

What do you think?

Interesting topic, Nick. I think I'm a category 2. The more nannies I employ the longer my list of requirements gets -- and of course some requirements drop off as the kids get older. For example, now that I don't have any babies the who sleep routine thing is non-existant whereas I used to really look for someone who would follow my routines.

I think type 1 gets more responses, but as you say, there will be loads of unsuitable ones to sift through... and who has time for that????

It always amazes me the number of people who clearly want something other than what I'm offering and apply anyway. For exampleI have recently posted an ad for a March start, and I get people looking for work in January. Do they think I'm going to kick out current nanny so they can start right away???

fwiw, i'm in group 2. i have still had tons of useless applicants from relatively detailed ads so i shudder to think what the responses to the group 1 ads are like. i would prefer fewer responses of better quality than tons of rubbish responses.

there's also a group 3 - supposedly humourous ads designed to show off how "wonderful" the family is. vomitastic.

i've just had a quick look at gumtree to see if i could find a sniggerworthy example of group 3 - but then i realised i had to get on with my life

Eleusis I sometimes responded to ads for which I wasn't entirely suitable, just in case there was some flexibility - in your case I'd say I was available from January, rather than I need to start in January, iyswim.

Having said that, if a job stated they needed someone fluent in Japanese I wasn't going to say, "Well Iknow a bit of French, will that do?"

But I never cease to be amazed at how some nannies etc interpret a detailed advert.

I like when they're bullet pointed and factual, rather than read like an article from Homes And Gardens crossed with Hello!(type 3, bk?)

And anyone advertising for Mary Poppins deserves to interview only morons. Cringetastic.

I read a gumtree ad for a nanny for an 'intellectually advanced' 8 month old. I'm still laughing and no, they weren't kidding.

Type 1 and a bit creepy tbh.

Yeah, that person is either completely ignorant of the nanny hiring process or is a moron... or both.

I sometimes wonder if I type too much in my ad and nannies can't really be bothered to digest it all and just apply anyway.

I wonder if 99% of the type 1's are actually scams. You know, the my name is Mr Smith and I have two children aged 3 and 6 called Gloria and Marcel, and we live in South America but we're moving to London we need you to start straight away and we will pay $500 a week. Please send me your bank details so I can deposit a years salary in advance.

Ummmmmm... ok then.

Any family I would actually WANT to work for would have to be quite detailed and honest in their ad, so I could decide whether or not I would be even wasting my time let alone the family's time by applying. It's such a lottery anyway. There are as many psycho families as nannies out there. It just takes a lot of work and a huge dollop of integrity to find a good match.

I've only ever been in the aupair, not nanny, market. I am a Type 2 advertiser. One of my stock questions to applicants is what attracted them to my ad. The best and shortlisted applicants have said that they liked my detailed ad and how I set out my requirements of the daily schedule. So I think it works for me. There is a LOT of dross out there.

Mine aren't massively long but I do put in what the duties will be (which aren't hugely onerous given that mine are school age). I keep the details about us brief because I then wait for the emails that come in.

I also don't reply to everyone who emails me because I just don't have the time - unless it's obvious that they have specifically emailed me (iyswim, rather than a stock 'here's my CV' response).

I got quite a few male nannies applying this time Nannynick! Unfortunately, the earliest any of them could have started was Feb which is a shame because I think we'd suit a male nanny.

Re, why are the ads short? I think a lot of people don't really know what they are doing and are frightened to put too many details in. When I put my ad on, I correctly identified 2 other families from round here just from (what they thought) were quite vague details they had posted but it's still easy to pick people out!

good to hear there are other male nannies around. Did they look good on paper, serious contenders for the job... if they could have started earlier?

I too think some of the one liners are likely to be scams. On the other hand, having too much detail in the ad, can identity the family to those who know some info about them already. I wonder if there is an optimum length - perhaps a few paragraphs detailing the essential info.

yes, definitely.

In terms of how they responded to the ad, they would have appeared in my top 3 (if it wasn't for the date issue) without even a second thought!

Interesting about the ability to identify families from details. I guess gumtree does not have pictures. But it is pretty standard for aupair websites I am been on to put a photo of the family up (or at least it will illicit a better response). So having put our family photo up, it would be pretty conclusive that it was us looking for some help (like having lifted the seventh veil, really).

Is there something I should hide?

I think I'm actually somewhere in between! My recent Gumtree ad would have ruled in LOADS of punters- hence our hundreds of applicants. I think I did this because I had virtually no luck with Simply Childcare and was afraid to rule people out. We had to invest in spending the time sorting through CVs. I'm inclined to be more specific this time in certain areas, though, as we did get such a massive response, if 20% fewer people applied it would still be okay!