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When I had a housekeeper, I found her on Craigslist. But I don't think I'd hire someone that's going to watch your kids on there. I'm a nanny & when I've been looking for jobs, I've used sitter city.com and care.com. You can have background check done through them and done if the people in there have already had them done. Good luck!

Care.com is a great resource. The folks that post on there have background checks and everything already. You could also post at your local university's early education school and see if you find a student who wants to nanny part time. They usually have EE credits already and are a great resource.

I third care.com, I like it more than the other, similar sites. Even if you don't know anyone with a nanny or housekeeper it still might be worth asking the children's librarian or Gymboree instructors and such. As a nanny, I have often networked with those people when I am searching and they have seen me interact with kids on many occasions so at least they can give you a basic idea of how someone interacts with little ones.

We had a few interviews through a nanny site... honestly, I forgot the name of the site... It was a few years ago now. Anyway, like Andrea though, I just didn't like the people we met online. I have trust issues though! Luckily, we found our live-in through word of mouth in the end. She worked for my aunt's good friend's coworker/friend. I felt a lot more comfortable because of that, even though there were a few degrees of separation there, but not much.

Word of mouth can take forever though, so just tell everyone you know ASAP. That referral was 1.5 years in the making for us!

Another thing I was going to do, but never had to/got to, was look into our church community for recs... Like, post an ad in the weekly bulletin.

Good luck!

I haven't used care.com but I got my nannying job (4 years ago now) on sittercity. good luck!

Word of mouth. If you can find ANYONE (maybe a friend of a friend??) who has a good nanny or maid, ask if she has a relative or friend she could recommend. I would be very wary of sites and also I would wonder about costs/commissions with agencies.