How to Hire a Nanny: What Families Need to Know

Is a Nanny the Right Fit for Your Family?

Before you start searching, it helps to be honest about whether a nanny is actually what your family needs.

A nanny makes the most sense when you need consistent, ongoing care. Not occasional coverage. If you are working full time and need someone present Monday through Friday, if you have a newborn who needs focused one-on-one attention, if you have more than one child and group care is not the right environment, or if your schedule requires someone who can adapt to your household rather than the other way around, a nanny is the right answer.

A babysitter is the better fit when your needs are irregular, short-term, or occasional. There is nothing wrong with that arrangement. But confusing the two at the start of a search leads families to either underpay a professional doing nanny-level work, or over-hire for a role that does not require it.

Some families find that their needs go beyond what a standard nanny arrangement is designed to handle. If your household involves significant travel, multiple properties, or a schedule that genuinely does not stop, the role you are describing may be closer to a full-time household placement than a traditional nanny hire. That level of placement exists and serves a specific kind of family well. It simply requires a different search process and a different standard of candidate. If that sounds closer to your situation than a standard nanny hire, it is worth recognizing that before you start looking in the wrong place.

Group care settings like daycare are an option some families consider, particularly for very young children. They are worth acknowledging and not much more than that. What they cannot offer is what a nanny provides by definition: your children, your schedule, your home, and your standards. Private in-home care sets a bar that group care is not structured to meet.

If you have decided a nanny is what you need, the next step is not to start searching. It is to do your homework first.

What to Define Before You Start Looking

The most common mistake families make is starting the search before they know what they are looking for. They post a vague listing, collect a pile of resumes, and then try to figure out mid-interview whether the person in front of them actually fits the job. That process wastes everyone’s time and often leads to a hire that does not last.

Here is what you need to define before you approach a single candidate.

Schedule and Hours
What days do you need coverage? What time does the nanny need to arrive, and what time does the job end? Is there flexibility, are the hours fixed, or are they asked to work overtime? Do you travel for work and need occasional extended coverage? Are you expecting the nanny to stay late when something runs over, and if so, how will that be compensated?

These are not minor details. They are the foundation of the job. A candidate who needs to be done by four will not be the right fit for a family that regularly runs to six. Know your schedule before you have that conversation.

Live-In or Live-Out
This shapes everything. A live-in arrangement changes the nature of the relationship, the compensation structure, the privacy expectations on both sides, and the kind of candidate who will be a good fit. Live-in nannies are not live-in housekeepers. Their schedule, personal time, and living space need to be clearly defined in writing before day one.

Live-out nannies have a cleaner boundary between work and personal life, which many professionals prefer. Either arrangement can work well. Neither works without clear structure from the start.

Duties Beyond Childcare
Most families expect some household duties alongside the core childcare work. That is completely reasonable. But it has to be defined specifically, not assumed.

Does the nanny cook? Are you expecting family meals, children’s meals, or both? Does the nanny drive the children to school, activities, or appointments? Does that require use of a personal vehicle or a family vehicle, and who covers insurance and gas? Is light housekeeping part of the role, and what does light actually mean to you? Laundry? The children’s laundry only, or the whole household? Are there pets that the nanny is expected to care for?

Every one of these is a legitimate expectation. None of them should be discovered two weeks into the job.

Language and Education Preferences
Some families prioritize a bilingual nanny. For families with young children, early language exposure is genuinely valuable, and a nanny who speaks a second language fluently is a meaningful differentiator. Be honest about whether this is a requirement or a preference, because it will affect your candidate pool significantly.

Similarly, some families want a nanny who takes an active role in early learning activities, structured play, and developmental support. Others want someone who keeps the household running smoothly and follows the parents’ lead on education. Neither is wrong. Both need to be communicated.

Your Family’s Values and Dynamic
This one is harder to put on paper, but it matters as much as anything else. How does your household run? Are you structured and schedule-driven, or more flexible and spontaneous? Do you have strong opinions about screen time, food, discipline, or outdoor time? Are there older children in the home who will have their own relationship with the nanny? Is there a co-parent, a single parent, or a blended household dynamic that a new professional will need to understand?

A nanny who thrives in a laid-back, unstructured household may struggle in one that runs on a tight schedule, and vice versa. The more honest you are about your family’s reality before the search, the better chance you have of finding someone who genuinely fits it.

When Your Non-Negotiables Become a Barrier

You have just done the work of defining what you need. That clarity is valuable. But before you take that list into a candidate search, there is one more thing worth sitting with.

Some of the criteria families set, particularly the ones that feel non-negotiable, have a way of quietly narrowing the pool down to the wrong person.

Language is the most common example. A family decides they want a bilingual nanny, or a candidate who speaks a specific language, and that requirement goes to the top of the list. There is nothing wrong with wanting that. Language immersion for young children is genuinely valuable. But consider what happens when a candidate walks in who checks every single box, the experience, the temperament, the professionalism, the values alignment, the longevity in previous placements, and that one box is not checked. Do you close the door?

I have been that candidate. I have sat across from families who had language immersion at the top of their wish list and walked out with the job anyway, because everything else I brought to the table made that one gap workable. In several of those situations the family hired a tutor, enrolled the children in activities with native speakers, or found other ways to build that language exposure. The candidate they wanted for one reason became the candidate who stayed for years.

The same principle applies to experience-specific requirements. A family hiring for a ROTA position, covering multiple properties, managing complex travel schedules, functioning across different households, may list prior ROTA experience as a hard requirement. That is understandable. But a nanny who has worked full-time live-in for several years in a demanding household has often absorbed more pressure, more hours, and more responsibility than many ROTA candidates. The title on their resume looks different. The capacity is there. They simply have not been given the first opportunity yet. I was one of those candidates too.

This is not an argument for lowering your standards. It is the opposite. Vet carefully. Hold the line on what genuinely matters: professionalism, verified experience, the right temperament for your children, references that actually check out. Those things do not bend.

But the candidate who speaks two languages and lasts eight months because they were never the right fit beyond that one criteria is a much more expensive outcome than the candidate who spoke one and stayed for a decade.

The families who have made the best long-term hires I have ever seen were the ones who knew the difference between a requirement and a preference, and were willing to recognize exceptional when it showed up, even when it came in a slightly different package than they expected.

What to Actually Look for in a Nanny Candidate

Once you know what the job is, you can evaluate whether someone is actually qualified to do it.

Paid Experience, Not Just Time Spent Around Children
There is a significant difference between someone who has been around children their whole life and someone who has been professionally responsible for them. Babysitting younger siblings does not carry the same weight as managing the care of another family’s children full time. Volunteering in a church nursery is not the same as being the primary caregiver for a newborn.

When you review a resume, look for paid, professional childcare experience. Look at the ages of the children they cared for and whether that matches what your household needs. Look at the length of their placements. A professional with a history of short stints at many families is worth asking about. Long-term placements tell you something meaningful about how that person shows up over time.

References That Actually Mean Something
References from previous families are one of the most important parts of the vetting process, and they are also the part most families treat as a formality.

Call them. Ask specific questions. Ask what the nanny’s greatest strength was. Ask whether there were any areas they struggled with. Ask whether they would hire them again, and why or why not. Ask how they handled conflict or a difficult day. The answers to those questions tell you more than a resume ever will.

A reference from a previous employer who gives genuine, specific answers is a green flag. A reference who cannot recall specific details, who answers everything in vague generalities, or who simply confirms dates of employment without anything more, is worth noting. And a candidate who cannot provide any references from families they have worked for, only personal contacts, is a candidate you should look at more carefully before moving forward.

CPR and First Aid Certification
This should be non-negotiable. A professional nanny caring for young children needs to be currently certified in CPR and first aid. Not expired. Not in progress. Current.

Ask for documentation. Verify the expiration date. This is not a bureaucratic hurdle. It is a basic professional standard, and a candidate who is serious about their work treats it as one.

Additional Certifications and Training
Beyond CPR, look for candidates who have invested in their own professional development. Newborn care training, early childhood education coursework, INA credentials, Montessori or developmental certifications. These are signals that a candidate takes their career seriously. They are not requirements for every role, but they matter in context. A family bringing on a nanny for a newborn should weight infant-specific training significantly. A family with school-age children has different priorities.

The Interview Is Not Enough

Interviews are necessary. They are not sufficient.

Most candidates will show well in an interview. They are prepared, composed, and presenting their best version. That is natural and expected. But interviews tell you how someone performs under observation, not how they show up in the daily reality of your household.

There are questions you should absolutely ask:

How do you handle a child who is having a meltdown in public? Walk me through a situation where you disagreed with a parent’s decision and how you handled it. What does a strong day in this role look like to you? What does a hard day look like, and how do you manage it? Have you ever been in a situation where you felt a child’s safety was at risk, and what did you do?

The answers matter. But so does how the candidate responds when they are not sure of the answer. Do they think it through honestly, or do they reach for what sounds right?

Watch how they interact with your children during the interview, if children are present. That interaction is often more telling than anything they say.

And then, regardless of how well the interview goes, move on to the next step.

The Working Trial Is Non-Negotiable

If you are hiring a nanny for any ongoing arrangement, part time, full time, live-in, or long-term, a paid working trial is not optional. It is the only way to see past the interview performance and evaluate how someone actually functions in your household.

A trial of one or two days is not enough time for either side to drop the performance instinct. You need enough days for both the nanny and the family to settle into something closer to normal. For most full-time positions, a minimum of five days is the standard. For live-in or long-term placements, ten days is a more appropriate floor.

During the trial, you are not evaluating a highlight reel. You are watching how this person handles the ordinary and the unexpected. Do they follow through on what they said they would do? Do they ask the right questions when they are unsure? How do they manage the children on a difficult afternoon? How do they respond when something goes sideways? Can they operate your household without needing constant direction?

There is a performance problem on both sides of a trial that is worth naming. Families sometimes clean up the chaos, manage the schedule tightly, and show the best version of their household during a trial, and then let everything relax after the hire. A candidate who goes above and beyond every day of the trial and then draws hard lines after signing creates the same problem from the other direction. The trial is meant to reveal reality on both sides. That only works if both sides are honest about what normal actually looks like.

If something does not feel right during the trial, take it seriously. Dismissing a clear concern because the candidate checks other boxes is one of the most common reasons nanny placements fail.

The Contract Conversation Happens Before Day One

No full-time nanny placement should begin without a written work agreement. Not because people cannot be trusted, but because verbal commitments do not hold when circumstances change. And circumstances always eventually change.

A written contract protects both sides. It is not a sign of distrust. It is a sign of professionalism, and any experienced nanny will expect one.

At minimum, the agreement should cover:

Compensation and Hours. Salary, hourly rate, and how overtime is calculated. This should be specific. If the family expects occasional late evenings, those hours need a defined rate.

Scheduled Time Off. Paid vacation, holidays, and any time off the nanny has already committed to before the hire. If the candidate told you in the interview they have a trip planned in August, that goes in the contract. It cannot be taken back after the fact.

Defined Responsibilities. Childcare duties and household duties written out specifically. Not broadly. If the expectation is that the nanny prepares dinner for the children on weekdays, it says that. If the expectation is that the children’s laundry is done on Thursdays, it says that. Vague language is where conflict lives.

What Happens When Scope Changes. A new baby, additional children, a new pet, a new adult moving into the household. Any of these represents increased responsibility and should trigger a compensation conversation. That principle should be in the contract.

Chain of Command. Who the nanny reports to. This matters especially in single-parent households or households where a new partner may enter the picture after the hire. A new partner does not inherit management authority over household staff simply by moving in. The original employer remains the employer of record.

Relocation Protections, If Applicable. If a candidate is relocating for the position, the contract should address what happens if the arrangement ends early through no fault of the nanny. A professional who moves their life for a job deserves contractual protection if the family ends the arrangement prematurely.

Have the contract reviewed by someone you trust before signing it. That advice applies to both sides of the table.

A Note on Finding Candidates

Where you find your nanny matters as much as how you evaluate them. Open platforms, social media groups, public job boards, and unvetted directories give you access to a large volume of candidates with no way to know which ones have been verified and which ones have not. A resume is only as accurate as the person who wrote it. Claims of experience cannot be confirmed without someone actually checking them.

Working with a platform or agency that conducts background checks, verifies references, and holds candidates to a documented standard before presenting them to families removes a significant layer of risk from the process. It also means you can trust that the pool you are drawing from has already been held to a baseline.

That baseline is not a guarantee. No process eliminates all risk. But it is the difference between starting informed and starting blind.

What Tier One Does Differently

At Tier One Private Staffing, every candidate in our pool has passed a comprehensive background and motor vehicle check, submitted verified references, and met a documented standard of professional experience before a family ever sees their profile. Families who access our candidates agree to a Code of Conduct before they begin, and every placement is built on a $25 per hour minimum floor. Because professionals who have done this work for years deserve to be paid like professionals.

Tier One Private Staffing is building a vetted network of professional childcare candidates in Richmond and select markets nationwide. Families who join the waitlist today will be among the first to access pre-screened candidates when family membership opens in their area. No open directories, no unverified profiles, no guesswork.

Join the Family Membership Waitlist

Written by Adam Wroe, Founder of Tier One Private Staffing. Adam has over two decades of professional childcare experience across full-time, live-in, ROTA and UHNW household roles. He holds an INA credential and CPR/First Aid certification.