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au pair selection advice

Choosing an Au Pair: Application Videos as Tools to Help Matching

by cv harquail May 26, 2011

If a picture paints a thousand words, then what does an Au Pair’s application video do? Au Pair videos seem like a great way to get a sense of an au pair’s personality and command of English. Even though someone could script and then rehearse perfect grammar and expression, you’d still get o hear his [...]

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Slim Pickings: Making the best of an ‘off season’ au pair search

by cv harquail February 4, 2011

The pool of au pair candidates (and host families) is deeper at some times of year than at others.We host parents have a sense that Spring (end of school year) and Late Summer (just before start of school) have relatively deeper pool of candidates. And, many of us prefer these times to match with au [...]

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Choosing an Au Pair: How much does the home country matter?

by cv harquail April 29, 2010

Host parents are often asked why they’ve chosen an au pair from a particular country, and whether an au pair’s home country matters. How do you answer that question, without sounding like you’re stereotyping too much? When it comes to having preferences for countries, we feel very comfortable prioritizing home countries based on language– if [...]

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Matching: What should a potential au pair tell you about herself?

by cv harquail October 23, 2009

Coordinating with the previous posts about questions an Au Pair should ask a potential host family, what would you like an au pair to tell you about herself? There are perhaps 4,387 categories of things that an au pair could tell you about, so challenge yourself to offer maybe the top 2 or 3… This [...]

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3 Questions an Au Pair should ask YOU to make a good match

by cv harquail October 22, 2009

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 [...]

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Matching with an Au Pair: When Racism interferes

by cv harquail October 2, 2009

Take a deep breath everyone– time to talk about something many people find uncomfortable: Racism.  But talk about it we must, because racism gets in the way of our relationships with each other. 3 Sources of “Racism Interference” Racism interference can come from three directions, any of which can influence your match with an Au [...]

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Choosing an Au Pair: How to Avoid a Princess

by cv harquail September 26, 2009

If only it were as easy as sticking a green vegetable underneath her mattress and waiting to see if she gets a good night’s sleep… We all want to avoid “the princess” – the au pair candidate who thinks the job is all about visiting the States, living in an American home, and having an [...]

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Male Au Pairs: When would you hire one? (Poll)

by cv harquail September 22, 2009

Have you ever thought about hiring a male au pair? I haven’t considered it, since I have two girls and I’m looking for positive young women as role models…. but one of my girlfriends has a male au pair for their two sons, and she’s found that a male au pair has been just as [...]

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The Boyfriend-Back-Home: Always bad news?

by cv harquail September 1, 2009

We got an interesting request for advice from a host mom who just found out that her incoming au pair has gotten a BBH — a Boyfriend-Back-Home. This mom is concerned because her first au pair – host mom experience was marred by her au pair’s devotion to the BBH over her commitment to the [...]

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Finding Good Au Pair Candidates: Best Practices for each system

by cv harquail July 21, 2009

How about we sort out our advice to each other, based on the kind of system that our agencies/sites use? I’ve set up 3 posts, one each for: Finding Good Au Pair Candidates 1: Best Practices for the "1 at a time" system Finding Good Au Pair Candidates 2: Best Practices for the "they give [...]

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