How to Hire a Nanny for a Private Household

Hiring a nanny for a private household is not the same exercise as hiring for a corporate role. The person you appoint will spend time inside your home, alongside your children, present for the parts of family life that outsiders rarely see. The searches that hold up over years tend to slow down at exactly the points where the fast ones rush through.

Start with the household, not the job description

It is easy to write a nanny brief around hours and duties and years of experience. Those matter, but they do not tell you what a good outcome actually looks like a year from now.

It helps to be specific about what is not working currently, rather than what the role should technically cover. Are mornings the problem — is the house in a low-grade state of chaos before 8am that you would like gone? Are you returning to work and need your baby to have a rhythm and sense of security that holds regardless of who is providing it? Do you travel enough that the nanny needs to be genuinely comfortable moving between homes, not just willing to? Or has childcare itself never been the gap — what you actually need is someone who catches the school logistics before they become urgent, and keeps the children’s world organised without being chased.

The clearer this is before you start interviewing, the easier it is to tell which candidate can actually deliver it, rather than which one simply sounds most qualified on paper.

Describe the job honestly, not attractively

There is a natural instinct to smooth over the harder parts of a role — the unpredictable schedule, the months of travel, the parent who works from home and drifts in and out of the day unpredictably — out of concern that spelling it out will put good candidates off.

It tends to have the opposite effect. Strong candidates are not looking for the easiest family to work for. They are looking for one that has told them the truth, because that is what allows them to succeed once they have started. If the hours shift week to week, say so upfront. If the family is away for a significant part of the year, explain what that involves in practice. If “light household duties” is in the brief, define what that means specifically — it can mean emptying a dishwasher in one house and running an entire home in another, and that gap is where a lot of otherwise good placements come apart within months.

Cover the schedule, the compensation, the travel, any existing household staff, your approach to parenting and whatever is genuinely non-negotiable for your family. Better to say it now than have it surface as a disagreement later.

Search where the right candidates actually are

A public listing brings volume, but volume is not always useful for a role this close to your family — it simply means more strangers reviewing details about your children and your home before you have had the chance to meet any of them and decide who deserves that information.

A more deliberate search tends to work better: approaching known professionals directly, going through networks with a track record in this kind of placement, or speaking with someone whose experience closely matches what your household actually needs, even if they are not actively looking. Share enough in the early stages to attract the right person. More sensitive details can come later, once there is real trust established on both sides.

Separate a good interview from good judgement

Some candidates present beautifully. They are fluent in the language of child development, they arrive with a portfolio of activities and it is easy to be persuaded by how well the interview itself goes.

That is a different thing from judgement, and judgement is what actually matters day to day. Ask how they would handle a child who is overwhelmed after school with three activities still on the calendar. Ask what they would do if a parent gave an instruction that did not sit right with them. Ask about a time they had to repair things after a difficult moment with a child or a previous employer. You are not listening for a flawless answer — you are listening for whether they can explain what they noticed, what they weighed and why they landed where they did. Candidates who are comfortable acknowledging that a situation did not have one clean answer are usually the ones who have actually done the job, rather than studied it.

Discuss working style, not only parenting philosophy

Two people can agree completely on how children should be raised and still find it hard to work well together, because the friction is rarely about the children themselves — it is about the daily mechanics of sharing a home and a routine.

Some parents want frequent updates and photos throughout the day. Others find that distracting and prefer the day to run without narration. Some want a nanny who takes ownership and makes calls independently. Others want to be consulted before anything changes. None of these preferences are wrong, but two people with opposite assumptions about “normal” tend to discover the mismatch after the job has already started, not before.

It is worth having this conversation directly — communication style, feedback, initiative, boundaries — even though it is a less interesting conversation than talking about developmental milestones. It is usually the one that determines whether a placement lasts a year or five.

Treat reference calls as real conversations

References work best as an actual conversation, not a final formality before an offer goes out. Confirm the practical details first — dates, responsibilities, the ages of the children, why the role ended — then go beyond that.

Ask what the nanny did particularly well. Ask how they responded to feedback they may not have wanted to hear. Ask what kind of family would suit them best, and where they might need more structure or support than others would. Ask directly whether the former employer would hire them again. Pay attention to what is said easily, what gets qualified and whether any of it does not line up with the person you have actually met. All identity, background and eligibility checks required in your jurisdiction should be completed as a matter of course, separate from what the reference itself reveals.

Use a trial for what it can realistically show you

A trial day has value, but it is not a fair test of whether a stranger can bond instantly with your children, and it should not be treated as one. The candidate is in an unfamiliar home, learning a routine on the spot, aware they are being evaluated — and children often sense that something unusual is happening and behave differently as a result.

What a trial can tell you is how someone enters a space they do not know yet. Do they observe and take their cues from the household before stepping in, or do they take over right away? Do they speak to the children with genuine respect, rather than performing warmth for the parents watching? When something does not go to plan, do they adjust, or do they freeze? That is useful information about presence and instinct. It will not tell you what the relationship looks like six months in, and no single day realistically could.

Put the offer in writing before assumptions form

Once you have chosen someone, put the details in writing: schedule, compensation, duties, benefits, travel expectations, accommodation if relevant, confidentiality and the start date. Follow it with a proper, locally appropriate employment agreement.

It is tempting to leave the smaller questions for later, assuming they will sort themselves out naturally. They usually do not. Left unanswered, small questions have a habit of becoming the disagreements that end placements a year in.

What a good hire actually gives you

A successful placement is not measured by how many tasks get completed each day. It shows up in quieter ways — your children feel secure, you trust what is happening while you are out, communication stays calm rather than anxious, and your home stops being disrupted by expectations nobody actually agreed on.

Done well, this hire does not just fill a gap in your week. It gives your family back the room to simply be a family.

Ayla & Storm conducts discreet, selective searches for private household professionals. We begin by understanding the household itself — not just the position, but what the family genuinely needs to regain.