Help, how do you navigate timing?

[Anonymous]

First time host mom half way through. I know we don't want to extend with current AP and have narrowed to a few candidates for our next one. First question: if your incoming APs timeline overlaps by 2-3 months with your outgoing AP what do you do? Some overlap would be nice, although I am not sure how outgoing AP will feel about that since she is interested in extending but I am not. And 3 months seems like a long time. What are some options? Release current AP a little early? How does that work?

[Anonymous]

I only interview candidates whose preferred start dates line up with then current APs end date (as I would assume is the case for most people). 3 months of overlap is definitely not workable. When you suggest "releasing" your current AP, you are really sending her into rematch which is not a very nice thing to do unless you legitimately have issues with her. Since you have six months, I'd suggest starting your search over and only looking at candidates with start dates that line up with your schedule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I only interview candidates whose preferred start dates line up with then current APs end date (as I would assume is the case for most people). 3 months of overlap is definitely not workable. When you suggest "releasing" your current AP, you are really sending her into rematch which is not a very nice thing to do unless you legitimately have issues with her. Since you have six months, I'd suggest starting your search over and only looking at candidates with start dates that line up with your schedule.

+1. We don't overlap at all as we like having a few days with no APs to reset, set up the new APs room, etc. But some families like a week overlap so the old AP can train the new. But more than that would be unworkable.

[Anonymous]

Have you asked the incoming AP if she is willing to come later? I have never had a problem pushing back start dates if they really want to match. 3 months overlap would be ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

You probably started looking too early, OP. I'd say maximum productive overlap would be 10-14 days. More than that is likely to result in bad behavior by outgoing AP and a feeling of lack of place/authority for new AP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you asked the incoming AP if she is willing to come later? I have never had a problem pushing back start dates if they really want to match. 3 months overlap would be ridiculous.

+1, I convinced an AP I was interviewing in January to come to July, she was looking for March.

[Anonymous]

We have not found overlapping to work well at all for our family and our job. Both times we did it, I was sorry that we did, and in those cases it was only four or five days. Only if you have a very complicated situation and zero time of your own to train should you even consider overlapping for more than a week. I would definitely avoid anything more than a week or 10 days at the absolute most. I’m a longtime Hm.

[Anonymous]

It's not a feasible match if your timeline and the AP's don't mesh. Do you have two bedrooms to dedicate to APs? Are you willing to pay 2 APs for the same time period? Even if these are non-issues, you run the risk of a poor onboarding of the new AP. Not recommended.

[Anonymous]

We prefer not to have an overlap. So, we typically only look at candidates that state that our preferred arrival time will work for them. And we bring up the timing early on. Once, we interviewed a candidate who could not get here when we needed her. We ended up matching with her anyway and had to figure out childcare arrangements for about 3 weeks. I cannot imagine doing this for 3 months in any direction.