French student looking for an au-pair job - where should she start?

[jamaisjedors]

One of my students (here in France) is looking for a job for this summer (July and August) and has been looking at various agencies to go through.

Has anyone got any pointers about which agencies are any good (I know this will be from a parent's point of view but would still be useful) and which ones to avoid?

Or any ideas about how else she could go about looking for au pair work?

Thanks

I have always used au pair world, which has worked pretty well for me. It is cheap for her to post a profile. 2 months is a pretty short time to be an au apir though.

Thanks. Yes I see that most of the jobs advertised are for longer periods.

She has seen agencies which offer this period but it costs about 300E to join them and we have no idea if they are any good.

Hopefully someone with school-age children would want some help in the holidays?

Au pair world has worked for me too. I think it is free to post a profile and you will only have to pay if you want to contact someone directly though often the families registered are full members.

Au pair world. Lots of people do the recruit just for the summer holidays and APs don't need to pay as it is usually the families that pay to make the contact. She can still express an interest in a family.

o she should sign up and see what happens - costs nothing and she can test the water.

Au pair world and greataupair are the ones which most people post on.

Agencies in the UK are likely to be free to join as you can't charge jobseekers IIRC.

Message withdrawn

How does that work for the au pair then bloss?

Message withdrawn

I would certainly not want my daughter to travel overseas to a job she's organised over the internet and no organisation to fall back on.

If you advise her to go through au pair world or another on-line agency she is potentially prone to exploitation. I know many on here look for au pairs in this way but at times I am horrified by some of the things I hear or read with regard to certain people's attitudes.

You should encourage her to try a British agency directly. If she's too young or inexperienced then she may be overlooked as there are lots of competition for summer holiday jobs.

There is an agency called pebbles which has a lot of French girls - we haven't used them as such, but I recall they had some French connections when we enquired.

Sorry Bloss.

It's just that I was asking for advice about how my student could find work, so I was wondering how the au pairs managed to put notices in the school newsletter.

Thanks Treesa, that's helpful, I was a little worried for her (not my daughter, but my student so kinda!)

I don't think it really matters how (agency/au pair website) she finds a host family - if they are the type to exploit they do it regardless. We've found all our APs through au pair world and I have met a lot of their friends who have also came to UK via au pair world who have all been very happy with their families. I also know couple of APs who came to London via agencies. One host family made the AP look after the kids during the day and work in their pub in the evenings (she was 16 at the time!) and the other one's host family expected her to spend all weekends out of the house...

I appreciate that if one comes via an agency there is an organisation they can turn to if they need any help and there are a lot of people out there who will exploit their APs - all I am saying is that going abroad to live with a family you do not know is always risky
no matter how you do it.

Message withdrawn