Good Help is Hard to Find These Days

I've been looking for someone to help me on a part-time basis for the last month and a half as my first nanny went back to work on a full-time basis for the family that sponsored her. I knew this was always a temporary arrangement and only for the summer but I think I was kind of hoping I could do it all on my own in the fall and save the money. I've proven to myself in these past few weeks sans nanny that I can do it by myself, but it is really tiring and I have a hard time dealing with the blips in "normal"...like when someone has a sleepless night or when the time comes, the first illness or a cold or egads, teething. On of my friends gently asked me if saving the money was worth the price of my sanity and she's right. I gotta stop being so cheap and just go out and find someone.

I had started out with very high hopes using the website www.canadiannanny.ca and I paid the membership fee of $85 to gain access to their listing of nannies but to be honest, I've been pretty disappointed in the quality of the candidates that I have been seeing. I think that if we were looking for a full-time nanny, we would likely be seeing more potential nannies but for what I'm looking for, I don't get that much serious interest.

I am upfront about what we need and I am very clear that this is a part-time position 3 mornings a week but I still get yahoos applying for the job and I get the sense that it is as a backup until they find full-time work and then will leave us. A lot of these nannies contact me, set up an interview and then not show up which is a complete waste of my time and extremely irritating. At the worst point, we had two interviews with two different potential nannies booked Sunday night and Monday night and neither one showed up. ARGH! I actually called the first no show to see if she was okay and if she was still coming and someone else answered the phone. When the twit realized that it was me, suddenly my call was disconnected and the cell phone turned off when I tried to call back. If you're not going to come, at least tell me. As it was, my poor DH was sitting outside with Daisy each night so that if the nanny arrived, Daisy wouldn't bark at the doorbell. Waste of our time - geez.

After suffering through this horrible process, we decided to take a break and are now back looking again but going about this in an entirely different manner.

We've decided to hire one or two Early Childhood Education students from one of the local universities to cover the 15 hours/week I'm looking for help. I've got job postings submitted at three of the universities that have ECE programs and hopefully, we'll see some better, more suitable candidates for our job.

All I know is that I don't want to see any more irresponsible, rude and flaky potential nannies that waste my time. The best part is that the career centers at each of these universities will allow you to do a job posting for FREE. I hope that someone with a good attitude who wants the experience of working with twins will apply for our job. Really, we can't see any worse candidates...