Nanny Nightmares – What’s Wrong with the Twenty-Somethings? (Chapter 6)

Too Good To Be True

SitterCity.com, 4nannies.com, enanny.com – I was through with trying to recruit someone through the local paper, and posted nanny listings on several nanny websites. I also looked into an au pair but didn’t think that would work given the number of hours we needed. Given my work load, my mom helped me to screen some candidates.

I interviewed several young women in their twenties who wanted to nanny for a couple of years – they sounded promising. Right off the bat I’d ask them how far along they were in the interview process because I didn’t want to waste my time with someone who was just about to accept an offer from another family. I spoke with about 10 different people, and about half of them told me that they were at the beginning of the interview process when they weren’t. After my husband and I spent three hours interviewing one woman over two days, she told me she had just accepted a position with a nearby family but would be happy to do some extra babysitting for my kids.  Yeah, I’ll be sure to call her.

Ugh – don’t these twenty-somethings have better things to do with their time than to waste mine? What happened to honesty and being direct? There’s nothing wrong with going after more than one job at a time, but be honest about where you are in the process.

I spoke with another woman who sounded nice who had worked for the
Tom Clancy – a real writer! She was discreet in the experiences she shared, but they did sound akin to those from a Hollywood nanny. All was moving forward with this prospect until I couldn’t reach her anymore. Turns out she was staying with her family and her sister wasn’t giving her my message because she thought I was a bill collector. Next.