Important questions to ask your nanny’s references
How asking the right questions can find the best nanny for your family
Hiring a nanny can be a daunting task. This person will come into your home and be responsible for the care and development of your children for a significant portion of their lives, so you want to make sure you are hiring the absolute best.
While resumés detailing previous experience certainly can be helpful - and thoughtful nanny interview questions can give you lots of insight into your candidates - perhaps nothing is as important as hearing about other parents’ experience of working with the nanny.
Enter: references. Here are parents who have previously worked with your nanny candidate and who know how they react in stressful situations, manage timeliness, and interact with children. A recommendation from another parent may be just what tips you over in choosing one capable candidate over another. But what are the right questions to ask, to really get the most valuable information from a reference?
As an NYC nanny agency whose team members have conducted tens of thousands of reference calls, we’ve picked up a thing or two about which questions really get to the heart of what you want to know - and a few that actually might not be as useful as you think.
How nanny references can help with hiring
They can confirm resumé information. This gets overlooked sometimes, but asking a reference about the details of a position can confirm the candidate has the experience they claim. Ask about age of children, duration of employment, common tasks involved, and any other practical details. Most likely, this will just give you confidence in the nanny’s experience, but discrepancies here may give you a clue that something doesn’t add up in the candidate’s story and may indicate that other things will be amiss as well.
They can give you warm fuzzies. Typically, a listed reference will give you glowing reviews about a nanny candidate - this is why the candidate chose them. In childcare particularly there is room for a reference to gush about how lovely a person is and how much both kids and parents adored them. For a candidate you were already feeling good about, this may give you the last happy feels needed to confidently move forward with a hire.
They can also give you peace of mind. By telling you about any conflict or issue that came up and how their nanny handled it, you can feel assured that the candidate would be equally responsible and competent if it happened while working with you. This may include communicating clearly in the rare instance they were running late; resourceful thinking if showing up at school without the required gym clothes or lunch box; or how they reacted in a genuine emergency.
Remember, references who liked a nanny candidate will not throw examples of conflict your way unasked. In fact, they may barely remember any, if the overall experience was a positive one.
Don’t be afraid to dig in, ask about specific instances and give time for the reference to dig examples out of the vault. Conflicts are inevitable. Often, seeing how a nanny handled a conflict when it did come up will be more useful to you than a hundred flawless moments where everything was great.
Nanny reference questions: be specific
The most important thing to keep in mind when asking reference questions is to keep your questions specific. Hearing a nanny’s reference say “They were great!” feels positive but it doesn’t give you a lot of information.
Ask references questions about specific job tasks or scenarios:
Scenario questions: “Can you think of a time when they needed to do X? Can you describe how they did that?”
Specific ways the nanny handled various situations: “How did they handle conflicts, tasks, communication, unexpected events, etc.?”
“Which tasks were part of the daily childcare routine?” Ask about tasks that pertain to the position you are hiring for, and how the nanny candidate managed those (whether it be baby feeding, dishes, cooking, homework help, driving, etc.)
Tailor reference questions to your childcare needs
There are plenty of questions that are important to any parent looking to hire a childcare provider. These may include topics like whether or not the candidate seems to like working with children and can create a good rapport with them. But each family is different, and your reference questions may not be the same as a friend in your local parent group.
Honor your needs and wishes as a parent and as an employer by thinking about what truly is important to you and asking references about that.
Sample nanny reference questions: common scenarios
If your job requires you arrive on the dot, on time every day, then a reliable nanny who will never be late is one of the most important traits you are looking for.
You might ask references:
Was the nanny ever late during the time they worked for you?
If so, how did the nanny handle it?
Did they communicate to let the parents know?
If you have school-aged kids and an important part of the nanny’s role will be to help with homework, make sure to ask a few schoolwork questions.
You might ask references:
How old were the kids the nanny cared for?
Was homework help part of the job? If so, what did the homework process look like on a daily basis?
Was the nanny able to help with homework?
Were there particular subjects where they excelled?
Or were there perhaps areas where they struggled to engage or guide the kids?
If you are stay-at-home parents, the parent-nanny relationship often becomes extra important.
You might ask references:
Was the nanny able to balance care for the child with other tasks, while the parent had quality time with the kiddo?
Was the nanny a person the parent enjoyed having around for hours every day?
By tailoring your questions to your specific needs and hopes and digging into the reference’s experience with similar scenarios, you can feel more confident that this nanny candidate will be the right fit for your specific family. There are wonderful, homework-genius nannies out there who don’t love working with babies. They can be the perfect fit for a family of older kids, but if you have a baby they won’t be right for you, and it’s better to know that up front than much later when you’ve invested time and emotions into the working relationship.
Questions that may not be helpful
As a parent, it is easy to want to try to control unforeseen events of the future. Imagining these events and how they may go is one way to try to get a handle of them and feel reassured that everything will go well. We often see parents asking references hypothetical questions that they haven’t experienced in their work with the nanny.
What not to ask nanny references
Asking, “Do you think they can take my baby on public transportation to pick up the older child at school and make sure they all have food before after-school activities without being late?” to a family with only older kids where the nanny drove everywhere may not actually give you any accurate information.
Instead, asking, “Can you give an example of a time when you gave the nanny new tasks they weren’t used to and how they handled it?” or “How did they handle time management on busy days with lots of moving parts?” may give you information for the scenario based in actual experience. In this way, the answer you’re looking for is more about the applicable base skills than the exact details.
Another example. Instead of asking “Do you think they can make a lasagna?”, try asking about overall cooking skills and what kind of things (if any) the family asked the nanny to cook. That is, unless the specific ability to make a 5-star lasagna is a vital part of the role, in which case hopefully you have also asked the candidate this in the interview. (And if it is, we don’t blame you. Good lasagna is amazing.)
Need help with nanny reference questions?
If the idea of chatting with a dozen parents to get references for your top nanny candidates is overwhelming, don’t worry. We’re happy to do that for you.
We speak with several reference for each nanny candidate before recommending them for a position, digging into the specific highs and lows a parent experienced with their caregiver to truly get a sense of who they are and how they are as a nanny.
Click below to reach out to us today and start your search. (And for more thoughtful advice on hiring a caregiver, sign up for our newsletter. )