frustrated with the matching process

[Anonymous]

I am trying to match for my next au pair. I'm getting pretty frustrated with it. I am reviewing candidates and when I contact them I don't hey much in terms of replies. One asked me a couple of questions and seemed eager to hear back from me. A few others once connected just stopped replying. They are from Europe.

It just seems different this time around. Some are outright rejecting me at all. I'm not a new family and I have school agreed kids so there is a big break in the middle of the day. My emails are cordial.

Is it the holiday? Last fee times I've matched the interested girls wow back actively. It's just so different this time.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

[Anonymous]

Even though these girls have registered with our agencies, there's increasing distrust all around. The girls know they are likely to be taken advantage of, seeing that there's no protection for them. Getting sent home after a few months of hell is not an attractive option for most of them.

The minority of good families like you, are at a great disadvantage.

[Anonymous]

We just matched in November and she arrives in February. She will be our 3rd AP, so we've done this a couple of times. I did have a couple who either didn't respond, but none that just dropped off. The few that didn't respond had signed on with the agency more than a year ago. I started to only seek out candidates who signed on within the last 6 months. I have also found that many of the candidates that I spoke to had close friends who were or are APs and had wonderful experiences.

Unlike the opinion of the pp, I found there were just as many candidates as before.

Good luck, OP.

[Anonymous]

ask your LCC for a candid opinion of your profile and your expectations. she may be able to give you advice on how to be a more desirable host family.

for instance, are you expecting too many weekend hours? do you not give car use off hours? are you too far from a city? are you 3+ kids? etc.

We had a terrible time finding an AP this time, because we have 4 kids, and most APs are looking for an easy gig- 1 or 2 kids. so, we upped the perks, like car usage off hours, gym membership, limited to no weekend hours, max of 40 hours per week vs. 45. (We also give a gift cards frequently as a thank you while they are here, plus a big Christmas bonus.) We still got 20 AP rejections until we found a great AP who comes from an even larger family than ours.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

2 kids 9 and 6 years old.
2 weekends off each month...maybe 4 hrs on the other ones. 20-25 hrs max during the school year. Full own carr use. Room not in basement. Suburbs of DC.

It's a pretty sweet gig.

[Anonymous]

sounds like a great gig. maybe you're getting little response just because it is around the holidays and a little off cycle for APs. The biggest AP pool starts in the summer. Give it more time

[Anonymous]

Are the 4 hours on the non off weekends during the day or evening babysitting ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are the 4 hours on the non off weekends during the day or evening babysitting ?

During the day. I don't often go out at night.

[Anonymous]

I had the same issue with European au pairs. Why aren't you looking at other countries. Brazil?

[Anonymous]

It's more likely to be the time of year than you and your benefits/work requirements. For what it's worth, I would not recommend emphasizing the 20-25 hours a week and every other weekend off. You don't want to attract candidates who are looking to do as little work as possible. There's plenty of child-related work such as laundry, cleaning kids' rooms, doing kid-related cooking, shopping, and dishes etc. that can fill those hours. (As an experienced HM you already know this I'm sure but in case other families new to the process are reading the thread -- it's better to set high/realistic expectations of the number of hours of work whether or not the kids are actually there, and then get more flexible over time).

OP -- which agency are you with? There's nothing wrong with signing up with other agencies to see what their candidate pools are like, particularly if you're currently with an agency that limits the number of candidates you can see and/or connect with at one time.

[Anonymous]

I think the holiday season has a lot of people with their families, so I wouldn't make much of the responses you getting right now. Things should pick up next week.

I was outright rejected by some of the APs who said they didn't want to work with two young kids and preferred older kids. One said she only wanted to consider California. So, there are factors you can't control and it's better not to waste your time with some one who's not really interested anyway. After doing so many interviews, I got the sense that a lot of APs are afraid that they'll feel awkward in the house with you - not free to join you for family dinner, having to awkwardly be invisible when they're off duty. So we address that up front. Car, phone, and guest policies are also big questions for many APs. If you're not letting her bring friends over, that will scare away a lot of candidates.

[Anonymous]

As a very experienced HM, I strongly agree with 12:07 not to sell your perks. We actually say nothing at all about our perks until MUCH later in the interview process. The two times I included info about our short hours and generous perks, we attracted totally the wrong types of candidates and ended up both times with APs who were looking to work as little as possible. I now spend a lot of time focusing on how hard our APs will work and how potentially challenging our job is so that we only get candidates who are up for a challenge. They are thrilled, when they get to the stage in the interview process of talking to previous APs, to find out what a good gig we are offering overall. On aupairmom, some of the HMs call this the "dare to match with us" strategy, but I think it's just being smart about advertising for the right candidate (which for us is someone who is capable, smart, proactive, highly responsible, able to juggle a lot of information, self-starter, etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a very experienced HM, I strongly agree with 12:07 not to sell your perks. We actually say nothing at all about our perks until MUCH later in the interview process. The two times I included info about our short hours and generous perks, we attracted totally the wrong types of candidates and ended up both times with APs who were looking to work as little as possible. I now spend a lot of time focusing on how hard our APs will work and how potentially challenging our job is so that we only get candidates who are up for a challenge. They are thrilled, when they get to the stage in the interview process of talking to previous APs, to find out what a good gig we are offering overall. On aupairmom, some of the HMs call this the "dare to match with us" strategy, but I think it's just being smart about advertising for the right candidate (which for us is someone who is capable, smart, proactive, highly responsible, able to juggle a lot of information, self-starter, etc).

Same here. I'm not upfront about what we are offering such as basement apartment, own car, phone, gym, summer vacations already planned with AP in her own room, 25hrs a week, 3 full weekends a month (many of them 3 day weekends since I take Fridays off), lake house, Key West over the Christmas holiday, and a lot of extras we will cover.

I know if I thew that out there I'd have them beating my door down. I'd rather is a pleasant surprise after attracting the right girl.