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Easing the chaos in the nest, one find at a time.

How to Find a Babysitter: Two Strategies I have Successfully Used

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When we moved to Chattanooga 3 years ago, I had no idea how to find a babysitter. We didn’t know a soul in the city other than the folks who hired Tim for his job. Finding a quality babysitter felt like a pretty insurmountable task, I have to admit.

But we did find a babysitter, and once she graduated from college, we found another one. I’m going to tell you the two ways I found these girls, and hopefully the information will help you out!

how to find a babysitter

Career Services Classifieds

For our latest hire, I checked out the career services office for our local university. I noticed that they offered job postings for their students to browse, and allowed businesses and individuals to post opportunities free of charge. So I put together an ad with what I was looking for (expected hours, pay, ages of my kids, etc.) and I requested interested applicants to send me their resume and their available hours for the semester. Within a week I had 17 applications. What an awesome response! Because I got such a great response, I got to be very choosy, and now my kids have a VERY sweet new babysitter who just started her first year at college, which makes me hopeful that she’ll be with us for 3 or 4 years!

Sitter City

If you don’t have a local university or if they don’t offer a job placement board, you might want to try the method we used to find our first sitter. We got a membership to Sitter City (*affiliate link) and it served us really well. We were able to post a job opportunity there for potential sitters to view and apply for, and we were also able to reach out to sitters in the database who might be good matches to bring their attention to our posting. The website is very secure, and sitters in the database have to go through background checks. It was a very efficient system and it was so nice to have instant access to an entire list of people in the area who were looking for babysitting opportunities. It basically made an impossible task become not hard at all!

how to find a babysitter

Right now Sitter City is offering 30% off its 3 month membership (I think a 3 month membership is a great choice, as it will give you plenty of time to find your perfect sitter). The 3 month plan is $49, but with the 30% off coupon, it is just $34.30. That’s about what I pay for a 3 hour babysitting session at my house…TOTALLY worth it to find the very best person for the job!

So those are the two ways I have successfully found babysitters. How did you find your babysitters?
photo credit: Ioannis Karydis via photopin cc

More Reasons to Join SittersSearch.com

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A few weeks back, I highlighted a very cool (and FREE!) online resource to help you find quality babysitting help. It’s called SittersSearch.com, and if you missed my first post, take a minute to check it out.

In addition to the great features of this babysitter finder that I highlighted originally, I wanted to take a moment to show you some additional aspects of SittersSearch.com that might make you want to get signed up if you haven’t already.

First, I want to highlight the safety and security of SittersSearch.com. Sometimes you get what you pay for, and when a service is free, you can’t really expect much in the way of keeping the information you hand over secure. That’s not the case with this website. When you are ready to reach out to a prospective sitter, SittersSearch sends them a message on your behalf that contains your message to the person, and your email address. You won’t get the sitters email address unless they want to respond back. The same is true for when a prospective sitter reaches out to you to express interest in working with you. In other words, your contact information is not immediately accessible to anyone who joins the site. There’s an additional step for added security, and I really like that.

The second great feature I’d like to highlight is the Advanced Search that SittersSearch.com offers. This can help you very quickly narrow down a list of potential candidates based on your particular needs. Perhaps you are looking for a sitter who is willing to prepare dinner for your kids. You can narrow your search to only those who state a willingness to do so! Or, perhaps you would really like to give your child additional access to a second language (my sister-in-law, for example, is placing her child in a french only pre-school for this reason). You can narrow your search by languages spoken and you just might find the perfect sitter who also speaks another language of interest to you! The advanced search can also be used to narrow down the level of work that you have to offer. There’s no need to interview someone who is looking for a full-time position if you only need help 10 hours each week, after all. Don’t get to the interview stage before you realize that you and the care giver have such different needs!

SittersSearch.com is a really remarkable sitter service because it is comprehensive, safe and totally free. That means you have more money leftover to spend on a quality childcare provider. Everybody wins! What the website really needs is more people to start taking advantage of it! Hop on and fill out a profile if you are looking for some extra help, or if you’d like to provide some extra help to families with children. You won’t regret it!

This post is brought to you by SittersSearch.com. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

A Teen Offers Insight on How Parents Should Choose Babysitters

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What Parents of Young Kids  Should Keep In Mind When Hiring a Teen Babysitter

Hannah is a teen writer for Radical Parenting.com, a parenting website written from the kid’s perspective with 82 teen interns! She is a 16-year old from New Jersey. She loves to compete with color guard and marching band, and play piano. She hopes to become a writer one day, and to inspire others to follow their dreams. For more articles by teens please check out RadicalParenting.com.

One of the many hard decisions a parent will make can occur before a child can even walk. Choosing someone to watch and take care of their children is very difficult, especially when most babysitters are teens. Therefore, it is best to have a few guidelines to keep in mind when picking a babysitter for a young child.

  1. Pick someone whose family you already know.

Sometimes, this may not be an option if you are new to a town, or if you have few friends with teens. However, if you are lucky enough to know a teenager, you will already know how they were raised, how they may handle bad situations, and if you can trust them with your child. Furthermore, a teen will probably be a better babysitter for a family they have known for a while.

  1. Choose a qualified teen.

Look for a teenager who has a babysitters’ certification. The Red Cross offers an informative babysitter course, and a qualified teen will be better with your child. The course teaches teens how to care for babies and even older children. Good babysitters do not necessarily have to have a certification, but it can offer you reassurance that the teen knows what they are doing.

  1. Find out about the teen’s life.

Make sure you know the teen’s interests. If your young child likes music, a babysitter that likes music will be more effective than one who prefers sports. Also, find out the teen’s activities. If the teen reports that they participate in various clubs and sports, they may sound responsible. They may also, however, be too busy to have a flexible schedule to watch your child. Also, find out about the teen’s family. If the teen reports having younger siblings, they will be more effective than an only child babysitter.

  1. Meet the teen before hiring them.

Before scheduling a teenager to babysit your children, choose a day to meet with the teenager. This way, you can show them around the house, discuss salaries, and see how the teen interacts with your children. If you just schedule a teen before meeting them, it will not give you any time to change your mind or see what the teen is really like.

Hiring a babysitter may be nerve-wracking, but it should be fun too. Just remember, this is your chance for a break, and many teenagers are capable of watching your child. You just have to find the right one!

How I Found the Right Babysitter for the Right Price

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Tim and I have been saying for months now that we need to find a babysitter. We’ve actually been saying it since we first moved to Chattanooga, but have really been feeling a sense of urgency about it for about 2 months. We realized that the only time we were going out on non-lunch dates was when we had family in visiting from out of state. It seems sort of silly that someone has to fly in or drive 6 hours in order for us to feel comfortable having dinner together!

So we started asking around. We still don’t know a whole lot of people in the city, and many of the people we know don’t live in our neighborhood…or even anywhere remotely close. There’s just no sense in getting the number of a great babysitter who lives 30 minutes away from us. It’s just not worth her drive, especially not for what we can pay!

A few weeks ago, I signed up for Sittercity, a website that helps connect people who want to babysit, nanny, or even help around the house with people looking to hire them. I’ve been thinking about doing this for over a year now, and finally took the leap.

I’m so glad I did!

In addition to being able to search for sitters based on your location, you can also post a specific job opportunity, and then interested parties can apply for the job. This is the route I chose to take because I am looking for something very specific: once a week babysitting at my house, for 3 1/2 hours, and the pay is on the low end ($8/hour). I wanted to be very up front about what I needed so that only people who knew what I wanted and were still interested would apply. I got 6 applications in just a few days time! Two of my applicants had background checks on file, which was really awesome. I set up two trial run babysitting appointments with my top two picks.

So basically, thanks to Sittercity, the wheels are in motion and I will soon have some help for the summer. I will also forge a relationship with a wonderful young lady in the area who could do occasional weekend babysitting for us during the school year, as well. To say I’m thankful for this service is an understatement!

I’m actually very strongly considering posting another job opportunity for once a week housework help. When we lived in Memphis I had a college student come over for 2 hours, once a week and do all our vacuuming and clean the bathrooms. It was the best $20 I ever spent, and even though money is really tight, I think that if I can outsource that work, I can do more with this blog and hopefully make up for the money spent and then some!

If you are interested in offering babysitting, pet sitting or house help, signing up for Sittercity is completely free! If you are looking for this help, Sittercity is offering a free 7 day trial. You can sign up for one month for $35 (totally worth that to find someone you can count on for the next year or so!) or you can sign on for a whole year for $140, which is less than $12/month!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you sign up, I make a small commission. But I’ve tried it myself, and am only recommending it to you because I know from experience what a valuable resource it is!

How Do I Find a Babysitter?

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Have you heard about Sittercity? I’m mulling over joining, and I’m curious to hear if anyone who reads this blogs has tried it yet.
Don’t know what it is? Sittercity is America’s largest and most trusted site for matching parents with local babysitters and nannies as well as pet sitters, senior care providers and tutors. Basically, people with sitting experience of various types create profiles where they list their age, experience level, education, expected pay for service, references, a photo and some information about themselves. They also note if a sitter has completed a background check!

You can go to the website and type in your zip code to see who in your area is registered. Being able to contact the people of interest to you does require that you become a member. Membership is $99 annually. You can also pay by the month, but there’s a $35 sign up fee if you go that route, so the annual membership is the deal.

I’m really tempted to give this a try because you can try it out for FREE for 7 days. I think that’s awesome! You never know…you might just find your perfect babysitter during your free trial week! 🙂

Please let me know if you decide to give it a try! I think I might take the leap. Now I just have to think about where Tim and I would go on a date if we hired a sitter!

Also be sure to check out their pay calculator. This is helpful for me, because I REALLY wish I could find an amazing babysitter who liked to be paid with chocolate chip cookies and hugs! Turns out, they need $10/hour MINIMUM in Memphis. Drats.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.