If Skype didn’t exist, if email hadn’t been invented, and if we could only communicate with potential au pairs using short, really expensive long distance phone calls (anyone remember those days?), we wouldn’t have the luxury of long conversations to help us assess a good match. And since we do have that luxury– and so do potential au pairs– we may not focus on the most important questions.
Here’s a question for you:
If a potential au pair wanted to learn more about your family in order to assess YOU for a match, what three questions should she ask?
See if you can hone in on the few things that might distinguish you from other families….
Questions Cost Nothing, but mistakes? … by Simon Lieschke on Flickr
- Male Au Pairs: When would you hire one? (Poll)
- Can this relationship be saved? “Uncomfortable” or something else?
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
(1) Do you eat dinner together?
(2) What do your children like to do?
(3) Do you like to travel? Would you bring me on a trip?
our AP asked Qs (2) and (3). She saved question (3) for a later conversation, which was a good sign for me.
I feel that if the potential au pair doesn’t ask questions about the children then she will not be a good au pair. What the children like to do, their personalities, etc.
1. Tell me about the kids and their personalities.
2. What does the family do in its free time?
3. What are your hobbies?
No exactly questions and not really 3, but still…
1. Tell me about your family (what are kids like, what do you like to do, how do you spend free time, what are favorite family activities, hobbies, vacations/trips, etc)
2. How do you see au pair fitting into your family? How do your expect au pair to spend her free time? What are the most important rules the au pair should know about?
3. Tell me about the area you live in (town, near big city, colleges around, transportation, shopping, cluster, LCC)
4. Be excited to join our family and not be afraid to ask for a match herself if it feels right to her.
An au pair should be interested in asking questions about the family and the children in general. If she only asks questions about free time, vacations, car use, she’s definitely not the right one for our family.
Some examples:
1. What are the boys’ personalities like? What do they like to do in their free time? What is their routine like?
2. What will be my household responsibilities? Will I be responsible for shuttling the boys to and from activities? Cooking? Light cleaning?–to me this shows that the potential au pair is interested in her role in the family.
3. What is one problem you had with your previous au pair? How did you handle it? How can we avoid having similar problems?
Here are the best questions I’ve heard from au pairs we interviewed:
1) Tell me why your first au pair worked out so well. What was it about her/your relationship that worked?
2) Can I talk with the kids?
3) I have a nose piercing…are you ok with this?
My personal favorite:
Is there a library in your town?
(You’re hired!)
My least favorite:
Is there a disco in your town?
(Next!!)
Yay! My new au pair has asked a lot of these questions. I’m so optimistic. Can’t wait until she gets here.
Back on topic… the #1 thing for me was whether she asked about the kids, of course. But besides that:
1) Why do you have an au pair vs. daycare or nanny?
2) What kind of a relationship are you hoping for with your au pair? Mother? Sister? Roommate?
3) Are you hoping that we (meaning au pair + host family) will eat dinner together? Hang out together during the evenings? Weekends?
4) Do you have a host family handbook? May I read it before making a decision?
If the au pair doesn’t ask these, the host family should definitely volunteer this information.
I remember asking everything, EVERYTHING about the kids on the first phone call. I guess I kept my hm on the phone more than she would like to be. But my first interest was to know about the kids I would have to live for a whole year. Then we trade emails and I got further on what the family was like. I also made the possible to let them know about me and my family.
I’ll never forget when we were interviewing candidates for our 2nd au pair, and our 1st, who was helping me by interviewing the candidates who made my first “cut” – gave me a firm “no way” on one candidate. Her concern was that this potential au pair only asked our current au pair about friends, parties, the nightlife, etc. – not a single question about working with our kids.
So yes – asking about our kids is a top question.
mmmmm…..my last Au Pair (lasted 5 weeks!) asked me 3 questions that should have alerted me to her incompetent and selfish personality:
1. Will you be paying for my air fare?
2. you will supply me with a cell phone?
3. Do you have internet?
…she was ssoooooooooooo wrong in every way!
A potential au pair should of course be interested in the children and the majority of the questions they ask should be related to the family, the kids in particular. However, I think that the questions that aussie mum’s former, not-a-good-match au pair asked are questions that need to be asked (hopefully these weren’t the only questions that the au pair asked though!)
When I was matching with families, the air fare question was addressed with every one of them. Some were willing to pay, some would pay half, some expected the au pair to pay for all of it (this was in Europe, without an agency, so paying for airfare was completely up to the family). Most families told me what their stance was on this without me having to ask. Why wouldn’t this be a valid question? The au pair needs to know whether she has to spend an extra $600+ or not, and yes, sometimes this will effect whether or not the au pair wants to be matched with your family. NOT because your family isn’t wealthy enough, but because the au pair just can’t afford to fly across the world and back.
Regarding the phone, I hardly ever use the phone that my host family provided me with, but I would feel totally uncomfortable and uneasy if I didn’t have a phone. You need to be able to call the parents if there’s an emergency with the children, period.
About the internet…I would never consider matching with any family who had no internet. Maybe that shows you that I’m selfish and incompetent, but if I didn’t have skype, I don’t know how long I would make it so far away from all of my friends and family. Being able to talk to my loved ones via the internet improves my well-being, makes me more emotionally stable, and therefore makes me a better au pair to the children.
I apologize for rambling (as always), but I don’t think that potential au pairs have any reason to NOT ask questions like these.
It should only be seen as a red flag if these are the only types of questions that she asks you. Of course she should be showing more interest in the children, but things like having internet DO matter.
I’m not sure about Australia, but in the US, there is cheap pay-as-you-go cell service that the AP can buy if she wants one & there is free internet at public libraries. I think the core objection to these questions is not that they were asked at all, but as any American adult can tell you, you don’t ask about pay and benefits in the early parts of a job interview. You learn about the job, what your role would be, see if you like the fit, etc. Then, once you’re pretty sure you both want each other based on those things, you can negotiate the other stuff. If the first things I get asked about are “Is there a TV in my room, what kind of car will I have, Internet, cell phone, time off” it is a huge turn off.
My favorite questions would be:
What did you like/dislike about previous Au Pairs, what would you want in the perfect Au Pair
Tell me about your kids – their personalities, likes/dislikes, relationship with the Au Pairs.
What are your favorite things about where you live and least favorite things.
Questions I would like to hear, after the whole “so, what are your kids like” string. (I mean, let’s face it–there is a lot of coaching that these girls get, depending on their situation and nerves, I bet.)
And I agree that asking about internet is not a deal-killer. I couldn’t live without wireless internet, and I want my au pair to be able to talk to her friends and mom whenever she wants. (“No long-distance phone calls: priceless.”)
Okay, the questions that would tell me that I have a thoughtful candidate on the line, and an ideal match for us:
Is it okay if I teach the kids how to cook?
What time is dinner?
Do you mind if I reorganize the kids’ toys?
Will you explain American idiom to me ad nauseum?
Okay, I’m only being a little facetious. Clearly, 3 questions is too narrow of a construct, and we are all copying each other (“how close is the library” made me weep).
Frankly, this post and comments have made me nervous; I am thinking about next July when we have to decide what to do, whether to keep a full timer, switch to edupair, or patch together an afternoon schedule of college students and early mornings for me at work. I don’t really want the candidate pool to read all these messages and get the ‘right answers’ the way you can buy term papers now.
Because while the great au pairs are really learning from this site, and thinking about these issues, and didn’t need the coaching anyway, the lousy ones are either:
1) sneaky (ask me about Pointy Boots, who disliked children but had ALL the right answers, in the right order, and never asked me about cell phone etc until she got here, then made a beeline for a boyfriend in Chicago). The sneaky bad ones already know how to manipulate people and systems.
Or, they
2) don’t care about learning, or being a great au pair, anyway, so it doesn’t matter what we post here because they will never seek it out, and if reading it, would probably misinterpret.
(Hmm. Am I cynical or seasoned? )
So, future au pairs who are nervous and excited about joining a host family, please take these comments to heart, make them your own, throw out the things that aren’t true to YOU, because that is the real “fit” you are looking for, and there are lots of types of families. Don’t settle for one that you have a nagging worry about.
And I’ll do the same.
Calif Mom, Someday will you write us the (whole) story of PointyBoots? It’s so intriguing, just from her nickname…
I like the word “sneaky.” I think that incorporates our Manipulator, Lier and Clueless Wonder….
I told one AP I was interviewing that I was going to email her our family handbook so she could know what our rules and expectations were; at the time, I thought it appropriate when she said something like “well the children’s well-being comes first, no matter what”.
Turns out what she meant by that is HER definition of the children’s well being comes first, with no regard to my rules. In her version of the world, that included TV starting at 9am (there’s a strict no-TV-before-lunch rule in our house). She also didn’t read the handbook at all, as was evidenced by her shock over having to actually *gasp* SHARE a car (and, if she “had known that I didn’t have a car of my own, I never would have matched with you”, regardless of the fact that this too was in the family handbook I emailed to her before we matched).
She didn’t last.
After asking questions about the kids and their schedule, one of the most important questions an au pair candidate should ask me is whether she can contact our current au pair. I think getting the scoop on our family and life from the current au pair is one of the keys to our success in finding good matches. Sure, I know they might share some criticisms about our family that would make me cringe if I knew about it, but I figure if a candidate knows what they are getting into directly from the person currently doing the job and accepts the job, then they are prepared to live with our rules and quirks.
Our last au pair was really direct in telling our candidates that we were not the right family for them if all they wanted to do was party. She was protective of my kids, and she could grill the candidates in ways I would not have felt comfortable. I kinda liked it. And when she didn’t scare off the candidate we picked, I knew we had a good match.
Two excellent candidates I was considering did not take me up on my offers to have them speak to our former au pairs. This set the au pair we did choose apart from those candidates, as I could not imagine declining an offer to speak to the person currently doing my proposed job. Now granted, I would not have wanted these conversations to take place if we had problems with our current au pair. And of course, there are always things we want to tweak from year to year with our relationships, but that hasn’t been a problem.
Couldn’t agree more that having your current au pair involved is a great way to screen and find the right candidates. We’ve asked our agency to pay for the international calls for the two to chat and they have! I ask our current ones to emphasize over and over again just how demanding and difficult the au pair job is and that it very much not about getting to travel with peers, socialize, and do some “babysitting” to earn money. I’d rather be truthful and scare, and take the risk I will lose a good candidate, than not.