Au pair with intermediate English skills - pass or doable?

[Anonymous]

I have been interviewing a candidate I really like. She hits everything we have on our must list and even some of our nice to haves. I've slumped with her a couple times and her English is not so good. I think she's partly nervous and partly just isn't very good at English. Has anyone had an au pair that started with not so great English skills? Did she improve or was it as issue te whole year?

[Anonymous]

Slumped = skyped

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of this depends on your needs. If your kid(s) are already speaking well and clearly, it's certainly less important than if you have a toddler (both for formation and frustration reasons) Secondly, if her native language is one that you marginally know or has a lot of similarities to english (spanish, german) then it may be easier than if she speaks Farsi or Portugeuse (unless you know those ) And finally, there is the issue of how much she is capable and interested in improving. We generally are sticking with Germans for the forseeable future and most of them have come over with good English skills but if they hadn't, we'd be screwed because they only socialize with other German Au Pairs and speak noting but German outside of work.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, PP. We have a 5yo and a 7yo, but we don't speak Portugese at all (the candidate's language). It seems like a lot of the Brazilian au pairs don't speak English very well. We have had three German au pairs already and were wanting to try a new country, but having trouble finding anyone qualified.

[Anonymous]

I have had good luck this year with a girl from Finland. She has great English and it's a refreshing change from German APs (we had 2 prior to her). She's friendly and my boys really enjoy time with her.

Have you looked at the Scandinavian countries? Finland, Sweden, Denmark? They have great girls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have had good luck this year with a girl from Finland. She has great English and it's a refreshing change from German APs (we had 2 prior to her). She's friendly and my boys really enjoy time with her.

Have you looked at the Scandinavian countries? Finland, Sweden, Denmark? They have great girls.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not ruling out any countries, but I have pretty high experience standards, so it's ruling out a lot of candidates just based on that. The German candidates seem to have the driving skill and the childcare experience I'm looking for. Everywhere else seems to just have occasional babysitting. I've found a few Brazilians now that fit what I'm looking for, but their English isn't great. Feel discouraged. We were hoping to match in January, so I guess I have time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have had good luck this year with a girl from Finland. She has great English and it's a refreshing change from German APs (we had 2 prior to her). She's friendly and my boys really enjoy time with her.

Have you looked at the Scandinavian countries? Finland, Sweden, Denmark? They have great girls.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not ruling out any countries, but I have pretty high experience standards, so it's ruling out a lot of candidates just based on that. The German candidates seem to have the driving skill and the childcare experience I'm looking for. Everywhere else seems to just have occasional babysitting. I've found a few Brazilians now that fit what I'm looking for, but their English isn't great. Feel discouraged. We were hoping to match in January, so I guess I have time.

I have high standards too. I need a strong driver and I found through interviewing that Brazilians are not as strong of drivers as Europeans. They don't have experience with ice and snow, and often share a car or have only one car per family. The driving there is not similar to here.

That's why I looked at Germans and northern Europeans. Finland is further north than Germany and has a lot of snow and ice.

BTW, my current Finnish AP has more experience than just babysitting. She had camp counselor experience (several years), kindergarten helper, had younger siblings and cousins, helped at a youth gym, and did sports with the kids. I actually have had the opposite experience than you. In fact, I have found other candidates from other European countries often have MUCH more experience than German au pairs. Often German au pairs have babysitting and two weeks as a kindergarten helper as their only experience. During matching recently, I found that the Austrian, Swiss and Swedish girls who were my top candidates had the best selection of experience, driving and education...far better than any of the Germans I was looking at.

But, to each his own.

[Anonymous]

Thanks 9:27. Maybe it's just the pool right now. I swear I've combed through every application in our agency and am just not all that impressed. I believe you that you've found other candidates with more experience than the Germans, I'm just not seeing it right now To clarify though, I'd say 80% of the German candidates are the 19/20 just graduated with their A-levels and did a little babysitting. Don't look a second at those ones. But there seems to be a group that had childcare training in high school and those are the ones I've had success with.

[Anonymous]

One of the things I did was register with another agency. It's free and you then have access to their pool.

In addition, if you do switch, most agencies will give you a "thanks for switching" discount.

In answer to your original question, I don't know if I would take someone with marginal English. God forbid there's an emergency and your AP can't communicate. I think its important to have good skills. I have ruled out APs when I couldn't even skype and get my questions answered.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Thanks PP. We've always registered with both of the big agencies in our area before and we've had Cultural Care and APIA au pairs. But our APIA LCC and their customer service, rematch process, and other policies just blow CC out of the water in our experience, so we're sticking with APIA no matter what. I do agree that first-time host parents or those that aren't as committed to an agency should sign up with many agencies.

To be clear, I have SKyped with her and she can answer my questions and can understand what I'm saying too. She's not terrible, but she needs me to speak more slowly and she has a trouble with some less common vocabulary.

[Anonymous]

Do you speak French or Italian as Portugese is closer to these lsnguages than Spanish. If you do not, then this is a disaster waiting to happen and most unfair to prosoective AP.

[Anonymous]

We have had both. With the Brazilians, one potential issue is that there are so many of them that they are not forced to speak English. So speaking w you and your children might be it. One of our Brazilians who had so-so English did not really improve at all because of this, whereas another who made friends with a Spanish ap spoke English all the time so improved enormously.

English is one thing that can improve rapidly if someone is really committed so you might want to find out what the AP's goals are for her year. The one who improved so much for us had the goal of working for an international company - which she does now, using her English daily - so she was deeply committed to really getting better.

Even with our fluent English APs, we have had occasional misunderstandings and miscommunications so you will just need to check for understanding extra carefully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you speak French or Italian as Portugese is closer to these lsnguages than Spanish. If you do not, then this is a disaster waiting to happen and most unfair to prosoective AP.

I do not speak either of those. Why do you think it would be a disaster and unfair to the au pair? I'd love to know any specific experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you speak French or Italian as Portugese is closer to these lsnguages than Spanish. If you do not, then this is a disaster waiting to happen and most unfair to prosoective AP.

I do not speak either of those. Why do you think it would be a disaster and unfair to the au pair? I'd love to know any specific experiences.

Communication! You have no foreign language and her English is slim to none. Inless you have infinite patience andan excellent sense of humor, thete will be major problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have had both. With the Brazilians, one potential issue is that there are so many of them that they are not forced to speak English. So speaking w you and your children might be it. One of our Brazilians who had so-so English did not really improve at all because of this, whereas another who made friends with a Spanish ap spoke English all the time so improved enormously.

English is one thing that can improve rapidly if someone is really committed so you might want to find out what the AP's goals are for her year. The one who improved so much for us had the goal of working for an international company - which she does now, using her English daily - so she was deeply committed to really getting better.

Even with our fluent English APs, we have had occasional misunderstandings and miscommunications so you will just need to check for understanding extra carefully.

This is really helpful. Thanks! You're right about even having difficulty with fluent APs. And all of ours have improved dramatically within a couple months.