I am a nanny. I look at care dot com sometimes, but have never joined. I see all those generic statements on there and it just turns me off. "Must love kids!" "And we're looking now!" "Games are popular at our house!"

I didn't realize the parents were kind of forced to put them in.

Until I read this thread, I had assumed that the families who post all that generic cut and paste nonsense were not conscientious about who they hired to care for their children if they could not be bothered to actually come up with their own individual words for their ad about what their needs are.

I use sittercity. But from now on I will be more understanding when I see those generic postings from families on care dot com.

I'm the OP. Care.com continued to frustrate me. It sends autoreplies to applicants also. You have to engineer a work around just to be polite.

Infuriating.

That said, I hired someone who I think and hope will be fantastic. So I guess worked out ok in the end. Still, there is a lot that could be done to improve that site.

Many, many professional care providers avoid Care at all costs. The generic ads are frustrating and typically, not worth our time. If you're looking I would highly recommend going through an agency!

If Care.com is starting to charge its users for services that were once free of charge, then yes going to Sittercity.com is an excellent idea.

I have met great families on there.

OP here. Yes, I've found all my best people through neighbors and other parents also. But I'm sure there are great people out there using the services. Craigslist isn't one I would think to use, but I might look into SitterCity.

It's equally bad from an applicants point of view...all these generic posts and no info to gauge whether it would be a good fit or work with my schedule. Now they charge you to apply for jobs which I think will be the death knell of them. Back to sitter city, Craigslist, word of mouth and neighborhood list serves.

When posting a job it forces you to use their highly limited format, while autopopulating a generic posting that they put up immediately. So applicants see and respond to highly generic text, and your ability to put in an actually informative posting is highly limited by word count.

I only need to use it every couple of years and I always forget in the interim just how frustrating I found their approach.

It would be so much more useful if it were more user friendly and built to accommodate variations in need or specifications from one position to another. It really makes me wonder what applicants have to go through, and how badly it distorts their ability to be seen as professional and responsive when responding to an ad.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for allowing my rant.