9 Key Things to Consider When Hiring a Nanny

So you’re thinking of employing a nanny? Great! Hiring a nanny is a fantastic alternative to sending your children to a childminder or nursery, but when doing so, it’s important to find the right person.

This article will take you through the key considerations you’ll need to make when hiring a nanny, whether this is the first time you’ve done so, or if you’re looking to replace an existing nanny that’s moving on to pastures new.

Assessing Your Needs

Before committing to a nanny, or offering jobs it’s incredibly important to really understand exactly what it is you’re looking for in your nanny. Are you looking for someone to solely look after your children? Or maybe you’re looking for someone that can support you with day to day housekeeping tasks alongside their childcare duties.

Here are some key questions to ask yourself when you’re looking to determine your nannies job description and expectations

1. How much support do you think you’ll need?
2. Are you looking for a nanny only for childcare responsibilities?
3. Do you think you’ll need support with other tasks such as the children’s laundry?
4. Do you want your nanny to prepare meals?
5. Do you need support full time, part time or for specific hours?
6. Do you need support in or outside of school term times, or both?
7. Does the nanny need to have an interest in your children’s interests?
8. Will you need them to drop off and collect your children from school or groups?

These are just some examples of the types of questions you can ask yourself. Having answers to these in advance can really help you understand exactly what you’re looking for.

Defining Job Responsibilities

Having clear expectations from the beginning is extremely important. It’s helpful for you as an employer but also gives your nanny the structure and guidance they need to do their job well.

You should define your nannies daily responsibilities into a handful of core categories. These include: housekeeping responsibilities, meal preparation responsibilities, transportation responsibilities as well as any specific nursing requirements if you have infants.

Creating a Job Description

A well written, and clear job description that details the role and expectations will really help you find and hire a nanny that ticks all your boxes.

A good job description will follow the below structure as a base, but can be tailored to your specific needs:

1. A summary of the role
2. Description of the ideal personality and profile of your preferred nanny
3. A detailed list of the job requirements and responsibilities
4. The required working hours and salary or hourly rate being offered
5. Any specifications for the role such as access to a car, any preferred training certifications etc

If there is anything that you’re simply not willing to negotiate on, its worth having these to mind. Listing what you’re not looking for can help remove any unwanted applications. For example, if you own a pet, you may want to say that the successful nanny must be comfortable around animals, or if you’d prefer that the nanny you employ doesn’t smoke, this is where you can highlight those non-negotiable items.

Most families will use this as an opportunity to highlight what’s important to them. Things such as punctuality and communication is a very common deal breaker if the nanny is unable to turn up on time or communicate effectively.

How to Find a Nanny

There are a number of ways to find a nanny. However, the most common way of sourcing a reliable nanny for your needs is through a reputable nanny agency or through word of mouth from friends and family members.

Using a Nanny Agency

Save time, no need for multiple interviews, or writing job descriptions.

These are just some of the benefits of using a nanny recruitment agency. But at the end of the day it is a personal choice. However, just because the responsibility of finding potential nannies falls with a recruiter, it doesn’t mean you have to compromise on the quality of applicants, or be out of the loop completely.

Here at Nanny Recruit, we try to encourage you to have as much input into the sourcing process as possible to make sure that we’re meeting your needs.

If you do decide to use an agency, you can typically expect to pay a ‘placement fee’. This will vary from agency to agency but is typically around 1 to 4 times the avg. weekly wage that is being offered.

For example, if you were offering a position at £13 per hour, with 40-hours per week. The placement fee could be between £520 – £2080. Although in some cases, agencies will operate from a fixed placement fee policy whereby they charge you a fixed price regardless of the hourly rate being offered.

Utilise Facebook and Childcare Websites

Facebook (Meta) has a number of community groups specifically for nannies and childcare professionals. These can be a great, low cost option if you decide that a nanny agency isn’t for you. The beauty of these groups is that their members are very active, and you’ll be able to get replies to a well written job posting fairly quickly. 

However, you’ll need to preview applications, and review them individually before lining up any initial interviews.

Conducting an Interview

So you think you may have found the perfect nanny, and it’s time to start preparing for a first interview.

At this point, you’ll likely have a list of questions prepared that you’d like to ask. If not, then we would urge you to spend time before any interviews are completed to do thai so that you can start to make decisions on applications, only keeping candidates that meet your criteria.

Although, it’s not solely down to the questions. You should prepare a welcoming interview environment if you’re interviewing in your home. There is nothing worse than getting stressed in the build up to a job interview, so making sure you’ll be able to manage that as effectively as possible can really put the applicant’s mind at rest and present the best version of themselves to you during the interview.

Do Your Due Diligence

As with any job, regardless of whether you are the employer or applicant, you need to do your due diligence. This will give you an added layer of security when it comes down to making a nanny an offer.

A few things that you should be doing include:

1. Verifying the nannies previous employment history
2. Asking for references or recommendations from previous roles
3. Asking questions about challenging times or environments – how did they approach it?
4. Verifying qualifications and licences

Set a Trial Period

It’s not uncommon for families to set trial periods with a new nanny. These can be great for a few reasons, including:

1. It allows the nanny time to find their feet and start building relationships with you and your children
2. It gives you the opportunity to observe their day to day performance
3. You have the chance to tweak the responsibilities and day to day tasks as things change
4. Most importantly, it allows you to see how well the nanny performs the day to day job
5. It also gives the nanny a fair opportunity to see what you as a family are like to work for outside of an interviewing environment

So how do you set a trial period?

Firstly, we’d recommend explaining to the nanny exactly what you’re looking to see during this trial. Set clear expectations but also remain approachable during this time as the nanny will also be adjusting to a new working environment and will likely have questions along the way.

Looking to Hire a Nanny?

If you’d like support in finding a nanny, our team here at Nanny Recruit would be more than happy to help you. Please get in touch with us today.

Psst… also, if you hire a nanny with us before the 31st December 2023, you’ll get 20% off your placement fee as well as a £50 Amazon or Mamas & Papas voucher!