What Happens After You Apply for a Job: A Non-Exhaustive List of the Things We Consider When Deciding Who Meets the Family

Remember when we touched on a few of the reasons you may not have heard back about a job you just knew was made for you? We’re back with an even deeper look into our brains to help shed some light on why that dream job may not have been so dreamy for you after all. 

‍

• We begin with the basic requirements.

‍

When thinking about who to present, we start with the family’s needs before we go to the wants. We don’t introduce candidates who can’t work the hours the family needs, who don’t have the immunizations the family is requiring, or who are allergic to the family’s pets. If the client needs you to drive your own car and you require your employer to provide a nanny car, we aren’t going to present you. Jobs that require lots of cooking aren’t going to candidates who have told us they’ve been known to burn water. After we work with the family to distinguish between the must-haves and the nice-to-haves, we don’t ask them to change their needs unless we deem them unethical or unhirable. 

‍

• Your driving record plays a part, too.

‍

Driving someone else’s children around is a major responsibility and we don’t take assigning that responsibility lightly, especially with newborns involved. A fender bender and a speeding ticket on your record are probably not enough to disqualify you from working with us at all, but they might keep you from meeting a family who is anxious about making the right choice for the first ever non-family member to drive the kids around.

‍

• We try not to have your daily commute feel like a road trip.

‍

We know that we have to be realistic with Triangle traffic, but we aim for drive times to be 30 minutes or less. Between two otherwise perfectly equally matched candidates for a family in Raleigh, we know that the client would prefer the one coming from Crabtree Valley over the one hauling all the way from Sanford, and so do we. What starts off as a cutesy drive with the wind in your hair on your first day in July feels decidedly harder in the thick of a blizzard. We can’t control the weather, but we can set everyone up for success from the start by keeping things as local as we can.

‍

• We consider ALL of your experience.

‍

Every candidate we place has at least three years of substantial, paid, professional, relevant experience. The difference for some lies in where those years were spent – some of our families actually prefer applicants who have lived a little life outside of nannying! Other times, we’re thinking of how they told us that they want someone who has stayed in a role for more than two years. Sometimes, clients get really specific about skills they’re looking for around the house and your stint as an office administrator sends you to the front of the line. Two things are true: Being a career nanny is a wonderful thing that deserves to be celebrated AND some families are very intentional about wanting to give a rookie a chance to grow with them.

‍

• The skills that aren’t on your resume are just as important.

‍

Once we’ve got all of the elementary criteria handled, we get deep into the weeds of special skills. Let’s say a family is hoping for a family assistant to come along with them on beach trips. All of the kids are old enough to swim on their own, but they want someone who can hold their own in a game of Marco Polo in the ocean. Of the applicants for that job, the confident swimmers who would be willing to get in the water with their employers take priority over the ones who can’t or won’t swim. You are not unqualified or a bad family assistant if the ocean isn’t your thing, but the best match for this family is someone who likes a dip in some saltwater so if we can make that happen for them, we will.

‍

• We want to place you with someone you can effectively communicate with.

‍

Our clients really span the whole spectrum of communication styles. Some want play-by-play updates. Some want annual check-ins only. Most fall in the grey area in between. We’re going to find the family someone who is truly comfortable communicating the way they need to feel at ease with their house and children in someone else’s hands. Faking it for a while if you know deep down you want to be having more check-ins than the family is comfortable with only leads to resentment and radio silence all day might set the family on edge if they were hoping for photos of their babies. 

‍

• Personality fit is a large piece of the puzzle.

‍

One of the reasons we spend so much time getting to know our candidates before the client presentation process is because we want a sense of your vibe. Are you outgoing and bubbly? Do you have to take a sedative to make it through a flight? Do people tell you that you’ve never met a stranger? Are you at home in the outdoors? Is your idea of a perfect Friday night staying home binge-watching Outer Banks? Would your friends call you adventurous? Do babies who have never met you feel instantly calm in your arms? To get straight to the point, we want you to like your employers and for them to like you. That means factors other than how many years you’ve been working get some airtime and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

‍

• The ittiest, bittiest details sometimes break a tie for us.

‍

On occasion, narrowing down finalists to the top 2 or 3 means something random like having similar music taste or a matching college sports affinity tips the scales in favor of one candidate. Of five candidates we love for a role with a family that loves Broadway musicals, the one who has a definitive opinion on if Avenue Q really deserved to beat Wicked out for Best Musical beats out the person who struggled through Hamilton’s heyday just because all of their friends were into it. Families who are really into soccer tend to vibe better with candidates who know who Lionel Messi is. You get the picture. 

‍

We aim to make long-lasting placements, not just quick ones. As much as we want to find you the role of your dreams, we want you to feel like the applicant of your potential employers’ dreams every time you’re with them. That takes time, consideration, and a lot of questions. You can be an extraordinary nanny overall and still not be what a family is looking for. We’ve been major players in this space for a long time. You are in good hands with us; let those hands do their thing.