Hiring for help at home
Finding a babysitter you can trust requires homework
H ome, for many of us, is a sanctuary.
Not just anyone is allowed through the front door.
There comes a time, though, when most of us will need to hire someone we can trust to cross that threshold — maybe even with a key— to provide care, to clean, to fix what’s broken.
When Brittany Jenkins, a first-time mother in Denver, went searching for her first babysitter last year, she was nervous.
She didn’t know many people in the area yet, having moved to Denver with her husband while she was pregnant. There were no relatives around that could help out, either.
“It’s a pretty intimate experience, having someone come into your home with your child,” said Jenkins, whose daughter recently turned 1. “There are so many crazy people in this world today— you just can’t be too sure with anyone.”
Just ask Ann Collier of Denver.
She and her husband thought they had found a great sitter— until the night they believe she stole two tickets from their stack of Denver Nuggets season tickets while they were out.
Later, when they confronted her after strangers tried to use the missing tickets to gain entrance to the game, the sitter claimed the Colliers had given them to her, in lieu of payment. She later deleted her online babysitter profile and stopped returning calls.
“Honestly, we loved her. It was a huge shock,” Collier said. “She was so good with our daughter.”
Horror stories aside, hiring a sitter for an occasional night out is a rite of passage for most parents.
Some swear byworking your personal network— friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, mom group, church — for recommendations.
For those without family or friends nearby, or those just looking to cast awider net, there’s another growing option — online. SpecializedWebbased services like Care.com, UrbanSitter and SitterCity connect families with local sitters, with many offering user reviews and easy-to-access background checks.
No matterwhatmethod you choose, though, parents say finding the right person comes down to doing your own research. That includes doing in-person interviews, checking references and running basic background checks.
“We can’t be too trusting in this world,” said Katie Bug-
bee, global parenting expert at Care.com. “To sit at that dinner table with an extra level of comfort and relaxation in the person you hired, it’s worth the due diligence.”
Bugbee, a parent of two herself, said finding the right sitter for your family starts with knowing what you specifically want.
Is CPR training important to you? Does your child have special needs? Do you want someone with experience with infants or older kids?
“Whether you’re doing wordof-mouth or creating a job post on a site like Care.com, you’re putting out your needs and your requirements— just like if you were hiring someone in your office,” she said.
The next step is a phone interview, followed by an in-person interview— in a public place, without your kids present.
The face-to-face interview is your chance to get a good read on the candidate, Bugbee said.
“You’re really checking not only for engagement and skills but also maturity and responsibility,” she said.
Bugbee’s favorite questions to ask are the “what-ifs”— what would you do if, say, someone rings the doorbell when you’re home alone with the kids, or if my toddler is jumping and falls and hits her head pretty badly, or if my child refuses to go to bed?
“That opens them up to think on their feet or tell you about an experience they’ve had,” Bugbee said. “You can really tell how confident someone is.”
Before the end of the interview, also ask for references if you don’t have them already, Bugbee said.
Not surprisingly, it’s a process, from start to finish, that requires some time to do right, she said.
“You can’t leave enough time in order to interview and find people,” Bugbee said.
After you find someone and book that first night, your job isn’t done, said Lynn Perkins, CEO of UrbanSitter, a Web-based service that uses Facebook and other information, like your child’s school, to connect parents with sitters that people they know have used and liked.
It’s important to communicate expectations clearly to make sure everyone— family and sitter— is happy at the end of the night, Perkins said.
Have the sitter come over early to get the rundown. Walk her through the house and kids’ schedule and share as much helpful information as possible, about the dynamics between your kids, a favorite toy to soothe a fussy toddler, or maybe a toy that often lead to fights.
“It’s a two-way relationship,” Perkins said. “You have to be as excited coming to my house as I am of you coming to my house.”
In Jenkins’ case, in her hunt for a sitter, she posted an ad on Care.com, a site she had used when she was babysitting.
If a candidate didn’t provide a background check through the site, or wasn’t willing to hand over references, she moved on. After in-person interviews, she narrowed the field to two.
The first sitter was a no-show on the first night.
The second, though, has been “wonderful,” coming over a couple of times a month to watch their daughter for the past six months, Jenkins said. The first night, they did a trial run, with she and her husband eating at a nearby restaurant. The second time, their minds at ease, they went to a Broncos game.
Her secret weapon: She told every candidate she might use a nanny cam.
“If someone is doing their job and doing it right, it doesn’t matter one way or another,” she said. “For us, it’s an added protection and added peace of mind that’s really important.”