Hellobee Boards

I just hired a nanny recently and a babysitter last summer through a similar website to care.com. I realized in all my interviews that our instinct and gut feeling was most important. Not just good qualifications and a good personality. AND since I had 2 babysitters help me out over the summer and had a strong preference for one of them, I HIGHLY recommend doing a couple of trial days. The reason I preferred one over the other was simply because she was better with my baby. She (B1) was better at getting him to nap, take a bottle, etc. I also felt I could communicate with her better. The second (B2) was good with my baby when he was awake, like she could play with him and take him out, but he cried so much when she would put him down for a nap and usually refused to take a bottle from her! B2 was a good person and I trusted her. She had great references, etc....but I and my baby just didn't click with her. And I would not have known that without spending a few days with her.

After that experience, when looking for a nanny, it became most important to watch carefully how they interacted with my baby. The nanny we chose was just AMAZING with him from the moment she walked in the door. I had a couple of candidates who I ruled out immediately because during the interview they refrained from holding or interacting with LO!! One candidate told me later on the interview that she didn't touch LO because she needed to wash her hands, which is great that she was conscious of that, but then I had to tell her "ok go wash your hands then so you can hold him". It was so awkward, lol.

anyway, to sum, I recommend doing trial days - for you to see the nanny in action and of course to help transition your LO.

ETA: lol, i wrote all that and then read your post again and saw that you already plan to do a trial day!

Another thing I thought of was the references. I was calling references for 2 people and one of them had good references, but they weren't outstanding! And I got a bit of a weird vibe from the person on the phone. So it just made me wonder "who are these people that hired this candidate in the past and do I want to trust their judgement". Basically, a good reference is not just someone on the phone saying the nanny is good, but the referring person themselves has to have similar standards to yourself.

I also questioned why that candidate (that I didn't take in the end) was always going from job to job, she had good reasons for each job ending (previous employer got pregnant, etc). And she gave me a whole spiel about why she couldn't give references from her most recent employer because she couldn't get a hold of them and didn't want to give out their number without their permission....okay fine, but then i thought that i could have waited until she did reach them, but she never offered that as an option...so she was another one who looked good on paper, seemed normal in person, was good with LO....but her references sketched me out a bit even though no one actually said anything bad about her. comes down to gut feeling again I guess.