100 Interview Questions for Nannies

When it comes to nannies/au pairs, you want to have a pretty good picture of whom you're dealing with to make sure the nanny is (1) Safe, (2) Honest, and (3) The Right Fit.  You need to plan on asking many questions to your candidate until you are comfortable making an informed decision.  

The thing I've learned with interviewing several nannies is this: If you are happy with the candidate's answers to questions you feel are most important to you, then that is a good thing.  


If you are not super certain after the interview, my suggestion is to keep looking because that feeling of uncertainty will not go away once the nanny is hired.  You want to have a feeling of certainty and need to have this to base you childcare decision on.  It may take time, and may have to interview more than one person but getting that feeling of certainty is so worth it because the parents who have it are so, so much happier when their kids are at home with someone they trust. 

Here are the ones I've come up with and used pretty much all of them in interviews. 


BACKGROUND QUESTIONS

• Tell me about yourself.  Where are you from?  What languages do you speak?  How long have you studied/practiced English?
• Tell me more about your childhood, what you studied, jobs you did, places you've worked?
• Have you lived anywhere else besides Utah? (If yes) Where? How long?  
• How long have you been in Utah? 
• Have you been to the United States before? (If yes) What year and how old were you?
• Why do/did you want to come to the USA?  Why Utah? 
• Do you have family here in Utah? Do you know anyone else here in the United States?  (If yes) Who, relationship, how long and where?
• (If your au pair needs to enter the US on a visa): Have you already applied for your visa?  When could you arrive?

FAMILY HISTORY QUESTIONS

• Tell us a little more about your parents.  How old are they and what do they do?  Married/divorced/widowed?
• What values did your parents teach you as being most important in life?
• In what ways are you like your mother?  Father? 
• What type of relationship do you have with your parents?
• Do you have siblings? (If yes) How many? What are their ages?  Do you get along well with them? 
• Have you ever lived away from your family before? 
• How does your family feel about you coming to the United States?  How do they feel about you being a nanny/au pair? 

QUESTIONS THAT RELATE TO A CANDIDATE'S PERSONALITY, MATURITY LEVEL, AND INTERESTS

• Why did you choose to become a nanny/au pair?
• Are you currently working for a family? (If yes) How much notice you will need to give them should you decide to leave for another job opportunity? 
• Why are you looking for a new position?
• Why are you interested in this position? 
• What are your plans for the future, school, life, travel etc?
• What are you looking for in an employer/host family?
• If hired, what will your priorities be during your employment with our family?
• What do you like to do in your free time by yourself? What about with friends? With family? 

PERSONAL HISTORY

• Do you have children?  (If yes) How many? What are their ages? What did you like to do with them when they were the ages of our children?  (If no) Is becoming a parent in your life plans in the near future? 
• Do you have a boyfriend?  (If yes) How long have you been together?  (For live-ins) Is he supportive during your stay as an au pair?  Do you think you will both be able to cope with the situation of being separated for a longer period of time? 
• What are your favorite foods?  Do you have a specific diet or open to trying out different food? 
• What we are paying a nanny to do is taking care of and being responsible for little children for an extended period of time.  It requires a lot of physical energy and also a lot of inner calm.  That being said, have you had any prior lengthy illnesses, physical or mental? (If yes) What? When? For how long? Are you in treatment? How long in recovery? What are you doing to stay healthy and be able to do the job? 
• Did any of your employers require you to have immunizations? 
• Do you practice a religion? 

QUESTIONS ABOUT A CANDIDATE'S GENERAL CHILDCARE EXPERIENCE

• What is your general child care experience?  Babysitting? Worked in a camp or daycare?  Have you ever worked with children the same ages as ours? 
• How many families have you worked for?  (For each family) Full time or part-time nanny? 
• How long have you been with each family you cared for?  What was the reason for you leaving?  Would you be able to provide references?  (Name and phone number of family worked for)
• How many children have you watched with each family and their ages during care? 
• What were your specific responsibilities with each family? 
• What was the most difficult part of that job with each family?  What did you like most about that job with each family? 
• Did you ever encounter an emergency while working for any of those families?  (If yes) What happened and how did you handle that emergency?

QUESTIONS ABOUT A CANDIDATE'S CARETAKING BELIEFS

• What do you like most about taking care of children? 
• What do you find the most challenging about caring for children?
• What kind of activities do you like to do with children who are the ages of ours?
• When a child becomes hard to control or our of control, screaming for no apparent reason or throwing tantrums - because all children do that at one point or another - How or what do you think is the best approach? 
• How long do you think should a child be left to cry? 
• Did any of your previous employers/relatives permit you to discipline their children? (If yes) What form of discipline?  (NOTE: if you do not want the nanny to discipline your children other than you the parent, you state this before asking this question so that they know this is the expectation in your family)
• What qualities do you think are important in a nanny? 
• What are, in your opinion the most important aspects of caring for a child? 
• What type of nanny would you want for your baby? 
• What are you most proud of when it comes to your job? 
• Would you pay a nanny according to her quality of service provided to her employer or based on her level of experience? 

OTHER QUESTIONS

• If we were to hire you, when would you be able to start? 
• Do you know how to prepare breastmilk/formula? 
• (If an au pair) What did the agency in your home country tell you about what to expect as an au pair? 
• (Explain all of your expectations of the job duties you will pay the nanny to do) Do you have any questions about the job duties or something we didn't address? 
• (Explain about Time Off/Holidays/Sick Days and whether those are paid or unpaid for the nanny).  Do you see any possible vacation plans that we should be aware about now during our interview?
• (Explain house rules if she is to live in your home)  Do you have any questions about house rules or something we didn't address about living in our home?
• (Explain your expectations about honesty and safety in the home) Is there anyone in your family or friendships that is dangerous that we need to know about?  Is there anyone in your family or friendships that have been arrested by the police? 

Last but not least:

• Do you have any questions for us?

Why Part Time Work May Not Be Better for Young Moms

When I decided to go back to work full-time when Baby was 6 months, a common response I got was 

"Couldn't you just look at part-time jobs??"

Part time work was the first thing I looked at.  After a while I realized that part-time employment isn't what it's all cracked up to be, and decided to search for full-time employment instead.  I'm not saying that part-time employment has no value.   It can put a foot in the door for something better.  But more often than not, what you get in return for working part-time is not worth the time and the cost that it takes to earn part-time wages.  

I tell moms who are in a situation where they really need the additional income and still have young children at home, that part-time work, while well-intentioned, will not resolve their financial situation in the short and long term.  Their best bet would be to look at full-time employment and preferably in jobs where you get a salary, and not in jobs where you have to punch in and out for lunch or something gimmicky like direct sales.  

Here are problems I discovered that come with part-time employment which led me to reconsider and to go ahead with working full-time.

Consider this example. While the scenario is hypothetical, the facts are true.   
Two moms live next door to each other.  Both of them commute to work at the same place and both earn the same rate per hour.  

One mother is employed full time and the other is employed part time.  Here's where part-time starts to become a problem, financially.  

Transportation Costs:
The person that gets hit the most with the transportation expense is the part-timer.  What it costs for a full-timer to get to/from the job is exactly the same for the part-timer.  

Insurance premiums:
Both of them receive employer benefits.  However the health and dental insurance premiums for part-timers cost more per pay period than for the full-timer.  This is why you see more happy retired folks in part-time roles instead of young moms; they take the income, reap the social benefits but don't need to pay for health insurance because they're covered through Medicare.  

Childcare Costs:
Both of them have the same number of children with the exact same ages and go to the same daycare. Childcare tuition for full time, 5 days per week turns out to be less expensive per day than childcare for 2 and a half days.  This is because centers have to find more employees to ensure adequate child-to-caretaker ratios for all hours of the day they're open or get shut down.  Part-timer is hit again with the extra cost.  

After adding all the expenses for both moms, the full-timer comes out far on top.  

While the full-timer is working 40 hour weeks, she ends up earning and taking more in take home pay PER HOUR than the part-timer. These expenses are why so many mothers start and end up quitting part-time employment very quickly without realizing that they probably could have been far better off with full-time employment instead.  

Other problems with part-time employment:
The reason why benefitted part-time jobs are far and few in between across all industries is because an employer gets more value for one person producing in one job than two people producing for one job.  It's also a pain in the butt for an employer trying to get coverage for 200 hours of work managing 10 people instead of 5 people.  

Part-timers reach a cap in what they can earn per hour, especially in entry-level jobs.  The wages for full-time positions more often than not, pay a lot more per hour than part-time wages, around 30-50% more!

Also, people who are broke, or on public assistance work less hours on average than the middle class and the affluent.  So if broke is where you want to get out from, then cowboy up and work more hours by obtaining stable, full-time employment.  

  

The Best Priced Diapers to Buy

If disposable diaper brand isn't important to you (and why should they be -- they all end up in the trash after use!) but PRICE is, the best priced diapers that I've found that get the job done is...

Comforts by Baby*.  They are carried by any store that sells Kroger products.  
They are far better priced than buying diapers at Costco or Amazon Mom any day.  

They're the ones in the green box with the firefly that is mistaken for a bee.  I think they are good diapers, soft and thick.  Like any diaper, including cloth, as long as you change often and practice good hygiene, your baby won't get rashes.  

The best thing about these diapers is that if you have a Smith's app (or Kroger app), you can download Comforts for Baby coupons to your rewards card keychain.  The coupons range $2-3 dollars and you get one every month.  

Usually they retail at 18.99 for their biggest box. For Size 5 diapers, it is 20 cents a diaper.  With a $2 off coupon, they are $16.99, 18 cents a diaper. 

Sometimes though, when a good Comforts for Baby coupon is circulating, the price of a box goes up to $20.99, which is still pretty good for Size 5 diapers at 22 cents a diaper.  But most of the time, they sell for $18.99.

Compare this with the Costco brand, Kirkland Signature. At $38.99, for a box of 150 Size 5 diapers, 26 cents a piece.  Sometimes Costco has a $6 coupon, making it 22 cents a diaper.  
Guys, that is still more expensive per diaper than buying Kroger diapers WITHOUT a coupon!  

The Southern Savers couponing blog has a terrific and helpful chart reference on best diaper price for a variety of sizes.  I recommend reviewing it before you start price booking on diapers.

Boxes for Comforts for Baby start selling at Size 2.  I only buy small packs if it's $4.99 or less.  Once in a while, I manage to get a pack of Pampers for $4.99 but not often, it's only possible with a $3 coupon combined with a store promotion.  There is another Kroger diaper brand however, called p$$t! that has Size 1 diapers retailing for $4.99.  They are just like Comforts for Baby but thinner.  

Here are the quantities for boxes retailing at $18.99 as of 4/13/2015 with the exception of Size 1.  Comforts for Baby at Size 1 sells for $5.99 a pack.  I bought them only when I had a coupon (making it less than $4.99 a pack)


- Many times, I've managed to pay $16.99 for a box.  
- Boxes last a little over 3 weeks of diaper changes.  

COMFORTS FOR BABY
Size 1   44 ct = 14 cents
Size 2 148 ct = 13 cents
Size 3 128 ct = 15 cents
Size 4 112 ct = 17 cents
Size 5   96 ct = 20 cents

At the beginning of this month I bought a box selling at $18.99 with a $2 coupon.  
On 7/22/2015 we bought another box at $20.99 with a $3 coupon.  
That made it buying a total of 192 diapers at Size 5 for $34.98 at 18 cents a piece.  

From my last two purchases with coupons, I got about a week and a half worth of diapers than if I were to buy the store brand at Costco at retail for $38.99.  Another way to look at it is that instead of paying $4 more at Costco, I got an additional 42 diapers by buying Comforts for Baby.  That's like paying 10 cents a piece for 42 diapers of Size 5!!!!

Which leads to the next thing in mind: are cloth diapers worth the money?  

This will largely depend on whom you talk to, but in this case you are talking to me, a person that is very objective on price, and tells it like it is with how money is made.  The thing I'll point out about with what I see with cloth diapering that most people do not is that cloth diapers have become a huge business where one can easily sell diapers to parents willing to pay $800 to $1500 upfront and never come back again.  Kind of like wedding vendors and used car salesmen, the price for a good elsewhere is usually inflated a lot more when you attach "wedding", "used" or in this case, "cloth"  

I do not know how cloth diaper advocates come up with such high costs for disposables because in a year, we spend under $330 on disposables for one child.  The low cost is driven by the coupons and also the cash back for groceries swiping our credit card.   

If you are apprehensive about cloth diapering and worried about paying for disposable diapers, the good news is that you can still save just as much, or even more money using disposables instead of cloth.  Again, Comforts for Baby are the best priced diapers I've seen to date.  




*disclamer I receive no incentives promoting this product. 

Reason to Lean In: A Man is Not a Financial Plan

My heart goes out to a young widow, two fatherless children and a man who died in his prime.  

For those that don't know who Sheryl Sandberg is, she is 2nd in command to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. She is Harvard educated and wrote the best seller "Lean In" 

On top of that, Sheryl is self-made having accumulated a net worth of over a billion dollars.  This is very rare since the majority of women who are billionaires become so through inheritance.

And get this: she made more money than her husband...but that wasn't an issue for him; a life with the woman he loved was far more important to him than how much either one was making.

Sheryl is my working mother hero.  Many women have criticized her decision to continue working while raising a family because she and her husband could have afforded a SAHM arrangement on her husband's income alone. Her husband, Dave Goldberg was the CEO for another Internet company.

The question I've been pondering after hearing the news about his death and want to discuss with my readers is this: Where would she and her children be today had she decided to Lean Back and be a Harvard housewife instead?

A man is not a financial plan.  Your husband can divorce, die, or get disabled without notice.

Sheryl had gone through one divorce (no children in first marriage) and now she is a widow with two children still in elementary school. But because Sheryl has been working full-time outside the home since graduating college, she does not have to worry about big financial issues that many widows/divorcees face such as having her house going into foreclosure, declaring bankruptcy or losing health insurance benefits.  Nor will she have difficulty finding employment that can earn her a living wage due to a 5, 10, 15 year employment gap.  Many women in this predicament do not have savings or money for retirement either.

Sheryl at the moment probably feels like she's lost everything because losing a spouse is a significant loss.  I bet she's trying to figure out how she will keep going through life without her companion.  But I know she will eventually figure out a way to keep going.  She can and will continue to take great care of and provide for her two children.

Mr. Goldberg chose wisely in having a smart, accomplished wife, rather than retreat from or try to dominate her.

If any of you are on the fence about continuing your career with kids, you can think about it this way:

Being a working mother is not something selfish that you do for yourself and to the detriment of your children. 
You are insurance for your family if something were to happen. 

Making Decisions With Confidence - When Deciding to Stay Home or Work

The Stay At Home Mom Vs Working Mom decision is a probably one of the most internal struggles women go through because it typically involves issues like these:

Uncertainty - You honestly don’t know how you are going to feel until after the baby comes.

Complexity - It depends on the situation...each mother has different family dynamics, different needs, different jobs, different backgrounds and different children.   

High Risk - the impact of the decision may be significant. 

Alternatives - Each has its own pros and cons. 

Interpersonal - Difficult to predict how other people will react.

A lot of people wonder how some mothers adjust perfectly to the transition of quitting their job and staying home and/or staying home but go back to work and be extremely happy with their choice, what's it like and whether they could do it too.  

Well I can tell them because I've done it.  I've reflected on this for some time and noticed two things.

First, I feel that many women postpartum rely too much on luck, timing, or instinct to make a decision, on top of being sleep deprived and overwhelmed with the well-meaning but unsolicited advice on motherhood.  Second, women on both sides that are unhappy with their decisions more often than not, try more vigorously to defend them than those who are happy with their choices and just move on with their lives.  

When it comes to something as serious as working or stay home, you need to be objective, not emotional.  You need a systematic approach to decisions so that no matter what type of decision you have to make, you can make decisions with confidence…and never feel guilty as an end result.  

The best way to make a big decision, as I discovered is to use an effective and systematic process, known as Critical Thinking.   

There are three Steps to Critical Thinking: (1) understanding the issue, (2) analyze the problem, and (3) explore options/alternatives.  

If you don't do the first two steps effectively, you cannot do the third step.  Let's take a look at each one in more detail.  

1.  Really Understanding The Issue  

Very often, you look at something on the surface and think “Well this is obviously the problem, it’s what we got to solve, very simple – problem solved”  But when you dig deep into it, you realize the problem you’re actually dealing with isn’t the problem at all.  Get to the bottom of it and understand the problem it is you are trying to solve.  

2.  Analyze The Problem 

Making sure you understand the facts and numbers in front of you.  This step is crucial.  

You can’t make a good decision about staying home or going back to work unless you’ve really done your homework, you have the facts and data, and you’ve had that rigorous analysis performed.  

In the spirit of staying home vs working, I want to stress that it is very important to discern facts from logical fallacies—statements designed to manipulate a reader by appealing to emotions rather than intellect.  There are many logical fallacies in both sides of the Mommy Wars but I won’t list them here.  Use facts – not logical fallicies as basis for your decision. 

Staying home vs Working more often than not involves a cost benefit analysis to determine important things like (1) will you continue to grow savings and (2) is it worth your time and resources as a result of choosing one or the other.  

You can include intangible items to the analysis but please consider that including intangible items and estimating a value for these items within the analysis brings more subjectivity into the decision making process, and as I said earlier, the decision must be an objective one in order to make the decision with confidence.

This is purely subjective, don't add this to your analysis.
There is plenty of market research from Procter & Gamble
that American women clean 4 hours a week instead of 14.  

Here's one example in how to be objective in a cost benefit analysis of staying home vs working: 

The take-home pay on one income needs to be smaller than you think.  If with an employer matching 401k, the breadwinner should increase retirement contributions by 10% because women outlive their men and need something to live off, the 50% of his SSN benefits isn't just going to cut it.  The breadwinner also needs to bump up the life insurance premiums to cover expenses without problems for at least a year in the event the breadwinner dies.  Depending on the employer, health insurance premiums are more expensive when you add a second child and beyond.  This results in the take-home pay being smaller and needs to be considered if you're serious in going off on one income - you do need to mitigate the risk by budgeting for these things rather than just hope for the best.    

3. Explore The Options

The truth is that rarely, there are immediate answers to a problem.  There are always several, and it’s really about exploring all those options and making sure you made the right decision in the end.  

Explore all options

There isn’t a one-size fits all solution when it comes to staying home or going back to work…there are multiple solutions and it’s very important to explore those in depth. 

Repeat this 20 times

In terms of making the decision around the best approach, you ask questions such as

“How important is ____ to me/us?” 

“What are some things we truly could not live without?”

“How sustainable is this option for our family if we continue this approach?”

“What are my options in the future if I choose X or Y?”

In conclusion, these were the steps I took when I approached the decision of quitting my previous job to stay home and again a few months later when approached with the decision of returning to work or continuing to stay home.  

After reviewing all aspects of the situation and giving careful, thoughtful consideration, I made my decision.  Both times, it turned out to be a really great decision for the situation at hand and it resulted in broader opportunities and certainly less stress for the family.  Everyone came out happy in the end.  

Now go and make your decision and respect the decisions of others. 

Back at Work after Baby

I'm late in announcing...I'm Back At work!  I returned to full time employment when Baby was 6 months old.  I stayed home 11 months. 

FAQ (aka Questions by Me and Answered by Me in my blog)

Which is harder - Stay at home mom or working mom? I think both are super hard if you don't have your husband to help you out at home.  Caring for young children is a full time job with very little to no flexibility for breaks or other home responsibilities unless another adult steps in to help.

The bulk of laundry, cooking, and cleaning got completed once my husband got home from work when I was home full-time.  One of us tended to our child while the other did whatever needed to be done.  If she was asleep we both would clean and cook together and maybe if we were lucky, watch a show on TV together.  

This hasn't changed since I returned to work full time nearly four months ago.

Where are you working now?
At one of the best companies on the planet - American Express.  

This is a great company for working parents to look into.    
(Opinions on this blog are my own, not of American Express)

Do you still nurse?  Yes!! I'm so happy about that since I had such a rough start when she was born.  Being at an extremely woman friendly employer helped to continue with nursing.  More on that later. 

Guilty?   Nope.  It made perfect sense to do this for our family at this time.  Just like it made perfect sense over a year ago to stay home during pregnancy. 

Who watches your kid?  Someone we absolutely trust and come to love like family.   

Were you bored at home?  Never.  This is the biggest lie ever - that staying home is boring.  
I always had things to do, and still have things to do - especially with my baby!

Are you sad about missing firsts?  At home I missed my baby's first rollover and then some while she was a newborn because I was sleep deprived enough to where I hallucinated that cats were everywhere in the house.  Babies are unpredictable and do what they want whenever they want to, not just from 8-5pm, M-F.  

Babies discover and do new things everyday and every thing a baby does each day is awesome.  It is really amazing as a parent to witness. 

Utah Moms Prefer Plastic Surgery over Vaccinating their Babies

I was surprised upon discovering that a lot of families in Utah do not vaccinate their children.

This came about after wondering why there were several billboards about vaccine advocacy while driving on I-15.  Isn't the majority of the population in Utah all about being healthy, up to the point of abstaining from tobacco, alcohol, and even coffee and tea?

Utah does have one of the highest rates for autism prevalence.  However, I don't believe that this alone is the reason many mothers in Utah opt out of vaccinating their children.

I think the low Utah vaccination rates are more due to a narcissistic mentality that is so prevalent in this state.

Jenny McCarthy has led a lot of moms to believe in her claims because she is a mommy just like them but to some Utah moms they want to look just as good as her, cuz she's a mommy too.

Any mom living in Utah can admit that they've seen this with women they know through their social circles.  This obsession with looking "perfect"

At church or in your neighborhood, it's all about looking better than the other moms and their imperfect kids.

Think about it:

• The majority of women that opt for plastic surgery are white, married, and college educated.
• The majority of mothers that refuse vaccinations are white, married, and college educated.   
• The majority of the female population in Utah consist of white, married, and college educated women.  
• Utah is notorious for plastic surgery because of white, married, and college educated women done with having lots of kids at an earlier age.   

To a "perfect" mom, her children would not be targeted by dangerous viruses or toxins because the children are her children.  Along with posting daily selfies on social media of what she wore, how she did her hair or how she looked at the gym, to enhance her "perfect/hot mom" image, she would never in her life create defective children.

To a "perfect" mom, needing to vaccinate suggests that she runs the risk of creating imperfect/defective children, or heaven forbid, they become autistic children, or have toxins in their perfect little bodies.

Not vaccinating her children is just a way for a Utah mommy with ridiculously flexible morals to feel superior to the rest of the Utah mommies and their imperfect children.