Whether you don’t have time to weed through the plethora of candidates or you don’t have enough to suit your needs — no need to panic. Here are some easy tricks to finding the help you need on Care.com.
Note: If you are a family looking to hire someone, this list should help with your needs. But we have a separate list of tips if you are a carer looking for a job that will give you more advice on how to best use the site.
1. Re-read your Care.com Job Advert
When something doesn’t work, start back at square one. Is everything in your original job posting clear? Does it make you want to apply for the job? If you are yawning reading it, chances are that the potential applicants are too.
2. Be Realistic
That old saying “treat others how you want to be treated” is definitely true, especially on Care.com. If you are asking for someone to help with the laundry, prepare dinner and cart your child off to football practice, £4/hour won’t cut it. (Besides that, it’s under minimum wage!). If you are hiring a babysitter and expect them to perform additional duties, make sure you pay for them. Put yourself in the sitter’s shoes: you wouldn’t apply to a job advert if there are too many responsibilities and not much pay.
3. Write Out the Minimum Requirements
We all have a wish list of what makes up the perfect Mary Poppins sitter. But instead of clogging up a job posting with less important details, focus on your must-haves. For example, make it clear that providers must have completed First Aid training. It’s okay to have a specific area for reasonable “minimum requirements” at the bottom of your application. If a sitter doesn’t have these requirements, they won’t be tempted to apply.
4. Be Personal
Tell a little about your family in the advert, not just the job. Talk about your 5 year-old aspiring ballerina or your dinosaur-loving son. It might be nice to hire someone who studied ballet or who knows the best dinosaur books. Those little things, like shared interests, can make a sitter want to apply to a job or not.
5. Educate Yourself
Not sure what the going rate for a sitter is? Did someone ask about writing a nanny contract but you have no clue what one is? Thankfully, our team at Care.com has you covered. Head to our ‘Articles’ section where you can find information on nanny contracts, what to pay your sitter and much more.
6. Advertise Your Job
While your advert is up on Care.com, contact some babysitters to see if they are available and send them the job advert in an email. Visit our babysitters page and search by post code. Message potential sitters you like about the job to see if they are interested.
If you get carers who aren’t a perfect fit, make sure you close the loop with them. Nothing is more annoying in a job search than applying to a job and never hearing back. Plus, you may find that the candidate who isn’t right for a nanny job might be a good occasional babysitter. It is important not to burn bridges with competent candidates who don’t quite fit the bill.
There can be a lot of candidates to look over, but taking the extra time to let child carers know where they stand is a courtesy and a time saver. The carer can now move on to other job applications (without wondering about the status of yours) and you don’t have to respond to follow up messages asking if you are going to hire them.