How many "Extraordinaires" does your agency have for you to choose from?

[Anonymous]

I'm really sad to say this, because I am with APIA, and I have been very pleased with them... but....

I like to look for au pair candidates who are "extraordinaire". It appears to me, that APIA currently has about 12 Extraordinaires in their system. This seems extremely low to me.

Can anyone from another agency give me a sense of how many extraordinaires they have to choose from? I'd hate to switch agencies, but the selection is important.

[Anonymous]

What arrival date are you looking for? I think it depends on arrival month.

When I was looking for a summer date, APIA had tons of them.

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for a summer date... but when I do the search, I leave the date completely open. There seem to be 12 Extraordinaires TOTAL in the system. When I limit it to the month I really want, I'm down to 6 or 7.

[Anonymous]

Is it automatically narrowing it down to infant qualified because of the ages of your children? Or automatically matching you with people who have put their age ranges matching yours, or are you clicking non-smoking, driving, etc. that might be filtering people out?

[Anonymous]

Nope. I have put in absolutely zero requirements other than "extraordinaire". Originally it was not showing "infant qualified" au pairs, (my kids are older), but the agency agent told me that adding the infant qualified APs would only add another 3 people.

[Anonymous]

Apia is the only agency that has this extraordinaire category. When we were looking for late fall, they had only a handful.

[Anonymous]

I am with APIA and our AP is truly extraordinary, but is not labeled as "extraordinaire." What is the difference?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am with APIA and our AP is truly extraordinary, but is not labeled as "extraordinaire." What is the difference?

Can I ditto this? I'm with APIA too and when I look for au pairs I open the pool to both "extraordinaire" and "standard." The best au pair I ever had was a "standard" and my current "extraordinaire" is quite good but not as good as the standard was. Just more specialized in certain areas and more expensive.

[Anonymous]

(I posted at 10:11 earlier and wanted to add that our au pair is wonderful and is not an extraordinaire either!)

[Anonymous]

I posted earlier but don't know where my post is.

They define an extraordinaire as one with additional childcare experience or education. For example, an au pair who already was an au pair or is a nanny. Or someone who has a college degree in education or something similar. Or who works in a daycare full time or hospital nursery, etc...

[Anonymous]

OP here. I agree that some of the best au pairs are not necessarily extraordinaires... and probably some "Extraordinaires" are lousy.

Our current au pair is a "regular" au pair. She's wonderful. (Although I think she could've met the requirements for the Extraordinaire program)

I like it as a search function, because it tends to give me a set of au pairs with "better" experience than the average au pair.

A lot of au pairs really have only limited experience as babysitters. In some families, with certain types of needs, this may work out just fine.

In my family, the job is a really full-time job, and I think 18-year olds who only have babysat 4-5 hours a week are woefully unprepared for full-time childcare for 45 hours a week. It doesn't mean they can't be successful, its just that I feel it is more of a risk (and one I am not willing to take, currently).

for me, its really about finding some applicants who have more significant childcare backgrounds. Otherwise, I'm sifting through 400 applicants looking for a needle in a haystack.