Succeeding on Sittercity: How to avoid the most common mistakes when seeking a Nanny or Babysitter job on Sittercity

I recently had my first child, and after a while of staying home with him, it became time for me to get back into the working world. We had friends who had good luck with Sittercity, so we posted an ad. We were looking for a part time nanny, 4-5 hours a day two days a week during the workday. In the first four days after we posted, we got over 90 responses to our ad.

Perhaps because the economy is so terrible right now, babysitting or nannying has really become a bit of a buyers market. And seeing that volume of responses it became very evident to me that some folks out there just didn't get it...they couldnt understand how to look at their presentation of self from the buyer's perspective and figure out how to position themselves to be an attractive candidate for the job. Here's my list of the most common mistakes to avoid:

Your coverletter to me is clearly a form letter. You tell me you are excited about meeting my “children” when I have posted an add for my only “child” and write more about how you have lots of experience with kids “just your children’s ages” without of course mentioning the ages (which I listed in the posting) and I am already more than halfway to deleting you from my search. Why? Well if I am going to trust you with the cognitive, social and physical safety of my baby, I sure as heck want to feel like you are willing to invest the four minutes it would take to fully read the two paragraphs about my job posting. In fact, I would really like you to take the time to click into my profile and be familiar with some of the information I put in there too. It shows a level of interest and engagement that I would expect of someone taking care of my precious little guy.

Your coverletter to me is skimpy. If you say little more than, “I’m interested in working for you, take a look at my profile and let me know if you are interested in me." I feel like yawning. And again, you just got blown away by the competition who took time to craft an actual coverletter with interesting, engaged content that shows me, rather than tells me, that they are truly interested in the job.

Your coverletter has errors. “Good evening, I am an honest, patient, and energetic caregiver with eight years of experience working with kids of all age groups and capability leaves” What are capability leaves? Was that supposed to be levels?

You have no background check. It would probably be easy enough to for me to pay the $9.99 to have it done, but truth be told I’m not going to shell out the cash until I am sufficiently impressed with you. And when there are 200+ candidates that are returned in my general search, it becomes mighty tempting to just click the button that limits the search to those who already have a background search. So just pony up the $10 yourself. It is the financial equivalent to one hour or less of your babysitting fee, and likely to keep you in the running on many more jobs.

You have no picture. One part of this is a similar logic to the background check. The system gives me the easy option of limiting my search to those candidates who have a picture. When there are a dizzying number of candidates out there anyway, why not limit as much as possible? But more importantly, your picture tells me a lot about you. I want to look at you and like the way you smile, to feel already like I would gladly sit down for coffee with you.

You have the wrong picture. Having no picture isn’t great, but having the wrong picture is an automatic veto. You always hear the stories about the student who loaded an unflattering photo onto facebook or myspace and was somehow negatively impacted because an employer saw it. I sort of thought folks would be hip to this by now. So I was shocked by the number of people who loaded unflattering pictures onto a site that is all about babysitting. I don’t want to see you with sultry eyes downcast and a bare shoulder that as far as I can tell from the photo implies total nudity. I do not want to see you in a micromini with your arms around two of your best girlfriends. And I certainly don’t want to see you listing vaguely to the left in a slutty dress with a “New Years Eve” crown on. I don’t want anything, in fact, that implies you are a major party girl and/or the husband stealing sort. Get a nice wholesome picture where all your parts are covered, preferably looking slightly geeky (perhaps a necklace made of macaroni or spiderman face paint) and having fun with some little kid.

You have a skimpy bio. This is, after all, sort of all the meaty substance I have to make a decision about you. So if your bio is just a 1-3 vague sentences about how you’d like a babysitting job and “just love kids” I’m not really turned on. Because it turns out that your competition has written lengthy and thoughtful paragraphs about why they want to work as a nanny, filled with specific details about what they love about kids, their experiences with kids, and what makes them qualified for me to trust my kids to them.

You have a disinterested bio. Some folks have bios where the length itself looks fine, but when you read it, it turns out to be all about them without any effort to show how those details overlap into qualities that make them attractive to a potential employer. I’m glad you are sporty and love six different sports. Instead of focusing on what you like as though this were a dating service, try focusing on how your likes dovetail into good childcare foundation. You are active and can keep up with energetic little kids. In your last job you used your love of soccer to create fun games for the 3  year old to play in the back yard and he went on to play soccer in a league.

You have no references or the wrong references. Your mom isn’t a reference. She just isn’t. Mass murders are still loved by their mommy. Seeing your mom as a reference makes me wonder if no one else who knows you thinks you are trustworthy enough. Its an almost automatic disqualification. So please get me someone who never nursed you to give me their opinion.  Even better, give me two nonrelated families you have babysat for as references. That impresses. And while I can understand wanting to protect reference’s contact information on the internet, at least give me their names and relation to you along with the button to “request contact information.” When it just says “references available upon request” I am already itching to delete you from my search unless you have hugely impressed me already.

published 2 years ago

Skinnygourmet

175 points