Tips on How to Find Child Caregivers, Interview Them and Hire the Best One
Newspaper advertisements and notices may give many child caregivers. But we cannot be sure all the persons we find by those ways are capable of fulfilling the job requirements. On the other hand there may be a risk on contacting those people as you do not know their background properly. Look for a child caregiver through a referral of someone you know. They can be friends, neighbors, relations or someone else you can trust on. Also there are many child care giving agencies that can make the process easier. Search through phone directories or search online to find reputed child care giving agency. Often these child care services act as a middle man who connect child caregivers and parents. As they are organized to do that, picking potential caregivers through an agency would be easy and effective. Even the potential child caregivers are found, you might still want to arrange a selection process that includes at least two interviews to make sure that a child caregiver is suitable for your child and the family.
You should arrange at least two interviews for each prospective caregiver. Ask them to bring the documents to prove identity, qualifications, previous worked places and most importantly the references. Just as the caregiver you should prepare for the interview as well. Note down important things to notice/do during the interview. Prepare a question list including few tough/tricky ones to ask from the caregiver. Few examples are :
1.Why do you become a child caregiver?
2.Since When are you doing care giving?
3.Ask why, if there are any time gaps between employment
4.What are your expectations of being a child caregiver?
5.What is the worst about the job?
6.How you plan to make sure my child's well being?
7.If needed, would you be available for weekends/holidays or for extra hours?
8.How you plan to discipline the child?
9.Give example for an emergency and ask what would she do in such situations? (home is in fire, there is an intruder trying to break in, suddenly the child is sick etc)
10.Salary requirements
At the end of the interview give the child caregiver to address any problems or issues. Check all her certificates/documents are legal. Notice if there are any qualifications on first aid, CPR, driving, child care studies etc and the previous worked places. If possible contact those parents to get information about the caregiver's service. Most importantly check the references and caregiver's background. If it is not possible to hire a private investigator to check caregiver's background, check her details with local authorities. Compare the responses from caregiver from first interview with the report from private investigation officers. If there are any wrong information by caregiver, that caregiver should not invited to the second interview.
By end of that process you can have better idea on each caregiver and probably be able to shortlist the prospective child caregivers. Arranging a second interview with shortlisted caregivers is recommended. At the second interview show the agreement and discuss further on leaves, holidays and salary etc. Follow up loose ends from the first interview if there are any. After picking last few prospective caregivers, give them a trail run. Consider all the facts including reactions of the child and the caregiver during the trial run when taking the final decision of who is the best caregiver for your child and the family.