We have a recommendation for you. What is your email?

we used gonannies.com to find ours. She is "qualified" for what we need her for. She doesn't have a degree or anything though and likely will not be able to help w/ homework much. Depends what "qualified" means to you.

are the hours at strange times or do they differ day to day, OP? If so, you may need to be a bit more than "competitive" to balance out those less positive factors.

care.com

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell everyone you know, that you're searching for a great nanny. For me, personal recommendation, has always been the best way. Unfortunately, lots of parents try to snag top-notch nannies with a promise of "competitive pay", only to find out that they really can't afford you. Very few parents want to pay what it takes to get the best.

Agree with the bolded. As an MB the pain of it is that I don't know too many people who can pass on recommendations.

Try your neighborhood list serves. Put it out there that you are looking, and look out for people trying to recommend their former nannies.

Anonymous wrote:Care.com has always worked for me when seeking families to nanny for. I once found a job on sittercity, but the majority from care.com. Sorry you are having trouble, good luck finding a great nanny!

I see this on here all the time and it baffles me! I have a profile on there but rarely check it because it seems like every parent on there is looking to pay $5-$10 per hour or some silly low ball weekly amount for a nanny/housekeeper for like 11 hour days. Care.com is pretty useless if you ask me, and I would think the pickings of good nannies are slim since most jobs listed there are a waste of time.

Anonymous wrote:Tell everyone you know, that you're searching for a great nanny. For me, personal recommendation, has always been the best way. Unfortunately, lots of parents try to snag top-notch nannies with a promise of "competitive pay", only to find out that they really can't afford you. Very few parents want to pay what it takes to get the best.

Agree with the bolded. As an MB the pain of it is that I don't know too many people who can pass on recommendations.

care.com

I used a nanny agency and went through 3 people doing trial days before broadening our scope of what we were looking for and THEN found the perfect person. We're in CA, so not a local (to you) agency.

We saw several great candidates from the NW current and the Gazette. We posted on-line and print. Its best to cast a wide net and invest a fair amount of time phone screening. Yes, there are tons of unqualified nannies out there but this doesn't mean that there are not tons of qualified nannies out there too. The problem is that when you first start screening and run into all the people who are not legal or have lost the jobs in retail and want to be a nanny because they have babysat once or twice in the past, you wonder where the good candidates are hiding. They aren't hiding, they just are overshadowed by everyone else because there is a low entry to be a nanny.

Many good nannies didn't really have written resumes. I started out assuming that I would only screen people who sent me resumes. The majority of people sending resumes were not nannies and didn't have nanny experience. I figured out that a resume just isn't as standard with nannies so lengthy phone screening was important. (You should feel free to politely cut the conversation off if the candidate you are phone screening has a deal breaker.)

Have found two out of three excellent nannies via a Cragslist ad!

Tell everyone you know, that you're searching for a great nanny. For me, personal recommendation, has always been the best way. Unfortunately, lots of parents try to snag top-notch nannies with a promise of "competitive pay", only to find out that they really can't afford you. Very few parents want to pay what it takes to get the best.

I found my job randomly on gonannies.com...well, my MB found me there I should say!

Anonymous wrote:Care.com has always worked for me when seeking families to nanny for. I once found a job on sittercity, but the majority from care.com. Sorry you are having trouble, good luck finding a great nanny!

+1

Has worked the best for me, many options.

Care.com has always worked for me when seeking families to nanny for. I once found a job on sittercity, but the majority from care.com. Sorry you are having trouble, good luck finding a great nanny!

Hi Parents (and nannies!),

I am having trouble finding a qualified nanny to take care of my infant son and toddler (toddler is in school until 4:30 every day). The pay is competitive, I am guaranteeing 40 hours minimum a week, and we live in a great location near Bethesda.

Parents - what sources did you use to find your qualified nanny (Care.com, DCUM, nanny agency, etc)? If you used a nanny service, which one did you use? I tried to create a poll, but DCUM kept giving me an error.

Nannies - what sources did you use when you were searching for a new family to work for?

Thanks everyone!