Your Family’s Au Pair Selection Process: Checking references

by cv harquail May 20, 2011

In a perfect world, we’d check the references supplied by each au pair candidate. It’s just too easy for someone who was untrustworthy to create references that make him or her look better than reality, especially when the reference givers do not speak English fluently. But, I must admit, in all of the times that […]

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

by cv harquail May 16, 2011

How do you “position” your family when you make your initial contacts with prospective Au Pairs? Do you like to lay all the cards out on the table, tough expectations and all, in the hopes that only the strongest will pursue a match with you? (Dare ‘Ya) Do you like to start sunny and light, […]

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

by cv harquail May 16, 2011

It’s critical to send potential au pair candidates some information about your family before you call them. You want offer enough information about your family so that you and the prospective au pair can tell easily whether it’s worth pursuing a potential match. In addition to sorting out potential mismatches on objective criteria like number […]

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What is your family’s Au Pair Selection Process?: Interviews (polls)

by cv harquail May 15, 2011

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 […]

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When Au Pairs Overlap, who gets the room? (Poll)

by cv harquail May 11, 2011
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Sometimes, the right thing to do as your family transitions from one au pair to another is to have your au pairs overlap in your home. As we know, overlapping au pairs can create some emotional difficulty for the incoming au pair, the outgoing au pair, your kids and you. And, it can also create […]

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Travel Outside the USA … Paperwork-related cautionary tale

by cv harquail May 10, 2011
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Sometimes no matter how many different sources we check, we don’t get enough information to make international travel with our au pairs go without a hitch. JamaicaMom sent this story, and wonders if there was some stone she left unturned, some box she failed to check, some egg that failed to hatch, some colloqualisim that […]

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Can you help your Au Pair use her free time more wisely?

by cv harquail May 4, 2011
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Have you ever been slightly envious of your au pair’s year of adventure? There have been many times that I’ve wondered what I mgiht have been like had I been an au pair (or an exchange student) and had the chance to live somewhere so different, make different friends, try new things, and experiment with […]

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Au Pair Agency Breaks Promise, and Revokes Completion Payment. Why?

by cv harquail May 2, 2011
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Dear Au Pair Mom, Today we received our monthly newsletter from our local area counselor. On the last page, it normally indicates year-end bonuses for the au pairs; however, now we see this: “Bonuses: There has been a change to bonuses. Au pairs who arrived before December 31, 2010 will still be eligible to receive […]

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Getting Past Stereotypes– of Brasilian Au Pairs, for example

by cv harquail April 29, 2011

When in doubt, use a decision rule. It can be clumsy, or crude, or sometimes nearly irrelevant, but a decision rule usually helps when we have so many choices. With choosing au pairs, we often employ decision rules that are good proxies for the information we really want but can’t quite get. For example, we use years […]

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Au Pair Asks: Will Host Family think I’m lazy if I can’t pay for my flight to the USA?

by cv harquail April 27, 2011
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Here’s an issue we haven’t seen before. This soon-to-be au pair has matched with a family who needs her right away. But– the au pair doesn’t have enough money saved to pay for her flight to the USA. How should she discuss this with the host family? What kinds of options might she suggest? And, […]

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