Reminder to Nanny Seekers -- Due Diligence is Essential

[ Portions of this article have been rewritten based on reader input. ]

It starts with a simple, innocent-sounding post. Someone is available to babysit. "I've heard that you are great," states a response. "I plan to hire you on Friday so my husband and I can go out," follows another. "I hired her and she was great," exclaims an additional accolade. And then, "Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate the great response." Taken nearly word-for-word from a recent thread in the DCUM nanny forums, this is an example of a sock puppet in action. The entire exchange was composed by a single individual hoping to drum up business.

In 1993, the World Wide Web — what many people have wrongly come to consider synonymous with "The Internet" — was launched. That same year, The New Yorker published a cartoon by Peter Steiner showing two dogs sitting in front of a computer with the caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". According to Wikipedia, Steiner didn't attach a "profound" meaning to the cartoon. Nevertheless, he managed to capture an essential truth of the online age and the underlying message — intended or not — is one of which we frequently need to remind ourselves. As a number of anecdotes from my experience with the "nanny ads" on DCUM illustrate, this is especially the case when using the Internet as a means of finding a nanny or other childcare professional. 

While attempting to troubleshoot problems and smooth the transition to the new DCUM discussion forums, I've had greater exposure than normal to the messages posted by those seeking jobs as nannies. While the majority of the posts appear legitimate — and certainly I've heard plenty of success stories from parents who have found great nannies through the DCUM website to support that perception — a number of the messages have caused me to reflect on Steiner's cartoon. As such, its probably worth reminding parents to do their due diligence when considering candidates to care for their children.

One phenomenon I've noticed is what I've come to call the "nanny ad blast". This is characterized by the same message — often in all caps and/or containing "creative" spelling and grammar — being posted to multiple forums within a few minutes. Its not unusual for the message's text to be almost exactly the same as an earlier blast, with only the nanny's name and contact info changed. I suspect that either the text of the message is being shared among job seekers, or a single individual is orchestrating a job search for others. Either way, I don't believe the job seeker wrote the message and, as such, there is very little in the ads that I would trust. The name and contact info is probably accurate, but I suggest ignoring anything else in the messages.

I've also noticed what I call the "job of the month" club. This group of job seekers are now looking for childcare jobs, but not long ago were searching for other types of work. For example, I noticed several posts by someone seeking a job as a nanny. The email address triggered my memory and, sure enough, a quick search of the old forums produced several posts with the same name, email address, and phone number. However, in the earlier case, the individual was seeking work as a painter and housekeeper. Another poster responded in a thread that she owned a nanny agency. She then followed that up with a post saying she also owned an in-home daycare. Wondering about the legitimacy of these posts, I "Googled" the included email address. Low and behold, I discovered messages on another website from just six months ago in which someone with the same email address and sounding like the same person was discussing plans to begin selling air duct cleaning equipment. I'm not saying this means she can't properly run a nanny agency or daycare — at least the air quality should be good — but its something to think about.

Speaking of nanny agencies, they frequently aren't much better. A year or so ago, I caught someone associated with one of the most well-known nanny agencies in the metro area engaging in "sock puppetry". The person was posting rave reviews of her own agency without disclosing who she was. A similar thing happened more recently with another agency. In the second case, the individual responded to other posters with recommendations of a nanny agency while representing herself as a satisfied customer. Earlier the same person had been posting advertisements for the agency. These shenanigans were so obvious that another user spotted them and brought the posts to our attention.

Similarly, I recently looked into messages by an individual who had been posting in search of babysitting opportunities. The person had been posting periodically on DCUM for several months, but I hadn't really paid attention. Upon investigation, it turned out that she had concocted entire threads consisting of multiple messages. Several times she had started threads with an advertisement of her services, and then followed up those posts with messages appearing to be from other people. An example of one such thread is used at the beginning of this article. A significant amount of creativity went into her ruse, which shows that on the Internet, not only do you not know if the original poster is a dog, you also don't know if the responder is a dog as well.

I'm sure these antics are common on any website of this sort — Craig's List must be full of them for instance. And again, these are a minority of the posts on the board. There are a lot of honest, hard-working, and caring individuals hoping to find a job through their posts on this website. Certainly, I respect and sympathize with anyone who is out there looking for work — never an enjoyable experience. Also, one of the most prolific recent sock puppets was a nanny seeker, showing that parents can play these games as well. The old adage "don't believe everything you read" may never have been truer than in this age of on-line anonymous communication.