Busy Mom has been very busy, thinking about how to make the Au Pair Selection Process better. She wrote a long guest post, complete with several suggested polls. Because her effort was so comprehensive, it was a bit much for one post and one conversation theme. So, I’ve broken it down (and added some things too) to create a series:

Your Family’s Au Pair Selection Process

Posts include: (full list forthcoming as I get them scheduled )

Your Family’s Au Pair Selection Process: Emails and Information before an Interview

Your Au Pair Selection Process: What’s your “Information Style”? (poll)

Now, from BusyMom….

BusyMom’s Au Pair Interview Process

Several posts during the past two weeks made me curious about other families’ selection processes. I thought that it might help our community, and particularly families new to the AP program, to share details about our search processes.

Probably the most important part of our family’s u Pair selection process is the Interview.

My mantra for the interview is “no surprises.”

In the interview, I try to cover everything so the prospective AP knows what she is committing to, and cover some of the most important points multiple times in writing and verbally. Knock on wood. We are on AP 3 and have never rematched. We pretty much used the same process through 6 searches for live-in nannies prior to having an AP and had only 1 who was a complete mismatch for our family.The last 4 nannies came from other parts of the US.

We spend a lot of time in interviews with candidates we like. With our previous, current and next AP, I spent about 2.5 hours in skype or in-person interviews over two sessions. Plus, DH spent 20-30 minutes and the kids collectively spend another 30 minutes – also on skype. That’s a total of 3.5 hours of talk time with our family. And that doesn’t include initial information exchanged via emails prior to the first interview.

We ask tons of questions. We also proactively share a lot of information as I’ve found that most AP’s are either too nervous to ask the tough questions or don’t know the questions to ask (in other words, the questions I would ask if I were interviewing for an AP position). We also verbally cover the highlights of our handbook in advance of sharing it.

Our interview process is a significant time investment, but, compared to the hassle of a rematch situation, it’s trivial. Not every candidate gets the 3.5 hour treatment. In the past 3 searches, we have reached the 2nd interview stage with only 3 candidates and matched with all 3. Only 3 others received the full 1-hour initial interview and those three rejected us.

Length of Interviews

Excluding the candidates that just don’t fit within ten minutes:

Duration of Process

Considering the time between your 1st email exchange to acceptance of match for the au pairs to whom you have extended offers…

VideoConferencing

Prior to the most recent search, I decided that we would not hire anyone we were unable to Skype with. I wonder, though, to what extent this limits our pool and was curious to know how many candidates have access to Skype.

Since I have a bit of an analytical, process-improvement mindset, I’m interesting to learn how the interview processes and timing that our family uses compares to processes of other Host Families. I look forward to your comments.

BusyMom

And a few more questions…

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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 host family. The specifics of that situation are interesting, and I’ll post them in a few weeks, but right now this mom wants some advice:
One of our very important interview criteria was “no boyfriend” due to the experiences we had with our previous aupair regarding this issue.

Long story short, below is part of the email I received from our new au pair to be today.

I can completely understand why this mom is spooked– We have always screened au pair candidates carefully around the boyfriend issue.

At the same time though, we’ve had two au pairs with BBH and in neither case did it turn out to be a problem. Both young men were encouraging of their girlfriends’ year of adventure, and encouraged the au pairs to stick it out through the initial homesickness phase. One of the boyfriends stayed with us before and after his vacation trip with our au pair, and he was not only a pleasure to have around but also had lots of fun playing with our little girls when our au pair was on duty for two days. In short, it could not have gone any better.

I think that this host family has the right idea in planning to call their incoming au pair to talk to her about how the boyfriend might influence her year here. Given that it’s a relatively ‘new’ relationship, who knows if it will even be active, much less serious, three weeks from now? (Not to sound jaded, but you remember when you were 19, right?)

Do you think a BBH is bad news? Do you have any good strategies for managing BBH issues as they come up? Please share in the comments…