Opinions about au pair agencies are divided. Some au pairs and hosts will only go through an agency. Anything else is too risky. Agencies offer safety and support. Other au pairs and hosts don't go near an agency. Why pay when you can get there alone?
When you use an au pair agency, your agency will review and screen your family for you. But when you apply for positions directly, you are on your own out there. Nobody reviewed or screened the families you are considering. So it is crucial that you ask the right questions. But what questions?
I became friends with Marlotte in Melbourne. Marlotte loved kids. She had a wonderful host mum, who I instantly liked. A match made in heaven I thought when I first met them and yet ...it didn't work out. Here are 9 steps that might have helped Marlotte to find the right family.
How do you entice your au pair to come? To actually arrive? An Au Pair disappearing between hire and arrival is a very common incident. Suddenly the cat is sick, the dog is dead and granny is in hospital. Or the passport got stolen on the way to the airport. You laugh. But these are all true stories.
When Ella received the offer, she was ecstatic. The family sounded great, Melbourne exciting and the pay a generous offer. And so Ella arrived in Australia wide eyed and excited. Ella had a wonderful time, enjoyed her work and was truly happy … and … then … everything … changed…
It took me 3 full days to realise that our new nanny was a chain smoker. It just had never crossed my mind. When I finally worked it out, I got a "You never asked" reply. And she was right. I had never asked. I had never even thought of this.
We thought we had done a great job. We had written an ad that gave candidates all the information they could possibly want to know. It was long and detailed and we even found a photo that wasn't completely blurred. We got a few applications here and there, but nobody seemed to be overly enthusiastic to find out more about us.
Hiring an au pair agency sounds like the end of all your worries. You no longer drown in applications. You no longer spend hours interviewing candidates. And you no longer call around checking references. You just outline who you need and are presented with a great solution. That is the idea.
To find the right au pair or host family you need to search in the right places. If time and money was no issue you could test every single au pair website. But time and money is always an issue. So we did the testing for you.
It sounded like a minor detail. Where should we search for our au pair? Worldwide? In Australia or just in our local area? We assumed that it wouldn't really make a difference. With time we discovered how wrong we were.