Episode 177: How Do I Hire a Nanny for My Baby?

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the Kids Sleep Show podcast, where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips, and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones
into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zenz, and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids Sleep Show. I am joined
by a special guest today, Miss Stephanie Fennaro. She is the founder of Hello Nanny, and we’re going to talk all things nanny sourcing and the amazing company she is building. I have been fortunate to have met her a few months ago, and we’ve been chatting back and forth on this beautiful postpartum space and all the overwhelming things that come along with bringing a baby home from the hospital. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us here. Why don’t you take a minute and tell everyone a little bit about Hello Nanny and what you’ve been up to? Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I am the founder and CEO of Hello Nanny. I started the agency because I begrudgingly accepted help for my son. He’s almost seven years old now. But I, my husband was very adamant about hiring support and hiring a nanny. But I was very prideful. I did not want to hire support. I felt like hiring support was
a failure that someone else would be raising my son for me. And I just wasn’t going to have that. And I really had this expectation of my husband to share the responsibility with me, with our son. But my son didn’t really want my husband and my husband wasn’t very familiar with having an infant and didn’t really know what to do and so we ended up at a pediatric appointment for my son and the pediatrician went from pediatrician to marriage counselor in that room and she asked me are you crazy your husband is offering you a nanny why won’t you accept help and i said because i’m not going to have someone else raising my son and And so she’s like, you’re not having someone else raise your son. You’re just accepting help. And so there was a level of pride that I had to set aside. So I accepted help. We ended up hiring a mother’s helper. And then the mother’s helper quickly evolved into our full-time nanny. And it was a revelation for me where I realized, because this was my second child, not my first, that accepting help ended up being a saving grace, not only for myself, for my own mental health, but also for my son’s wellbeing and development and also for my marriage. So I attribute my nanny to literally saving my marriage because this is my second marriage. I am remarried. And so with that, I found that, you know what, if there’s something that I can do, it’s to advocate for more moms to accept help. I have a sales and business development background. And so it’s always been very important to me that what I do for a living, that it is something that I am convicted of, that I’m passionate about. And so I started Hello Nanny. And now from the mountaintops, I encourage and inspire moms and parents all around the United States to accept help, higher support. It is not a weakness. It can actually be a superpower. And so that’s what I’m doing and my why. I love it and you know you just said a word that is so beautiful and something I say every day sleep is my superpower right and and I think we as mothers for some reason and I’m not just generalizing mothers but for the most part you know have this unrealistic expectation of what motherhood should be. I put a podcast out actually the day that we’re recording this called Not Gonna Lie,
I Hated Postpartum. I thought I was going to come home and milk would flow like wine from my boobs and I would have this beautiful kumbaya baby that would sit in my lap and poo and I would eat, you know, bonbons and watch Law and Order and manage my team of 40 at work while I was on maternity leave for 12 weeks and everything was perfect. It sucked. And I didn’t have help. My village didn’t exist. My mom was dead. And my husband was the CFO of eBay International at the time or controller, whatever title they wanted to give them that day. But regardless, it was month end. My son was born on the 28th. So guess who went back to close the books? And all of a sudden I was like thrust into parenting with my first kid. The best I got was how to strap a car seat in at the hospital. And that’s it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was leaning on my own, like just intuition, which is crazy because it’s a human and you just feel so ill prepared. And, you know, I, I, I never really, to your point, pridefully wanted to help because I was like, gosh, that’s going to show that I’m weak, that I can’t do this, that I suck at being a mom. And that is like, I mean, I thrust into like anxiety, depression, you know, I was trying to be the perfect nursing mom, the perfect new mom, the perfect housewife, the perfect wife, the perfect boss who was on maternity leave with 40 people who still needed me, you know. And it was just like, gosh, that was 10 years ago now. I would have hired a nanny in a second because especially with your second, there are aspects of a newborn that you need to tend to, right? And then there’s aspects of a toddler that need different things from us as parents. And I think what you’re doing is so cool because you’re opening up the door to the conversation, which nobody wants to do, about it is okay to ask for help. It is okay to accept help, to do it in a part-time capacity in a full-time capacity like when i hear nanny i think full-time nanny’s coming in so like explain to somebody who maybe just had a baby and is like you’re resonating with us today what like talk about the nanny process right because i think a lot of people have said to me when i took my son back to daycare at 12 weeks they’re like daycare’s raising your son i’m like no daycare is providing supervision for my son while I am providing financially for our family and my own maternal mental health, because working is what I choose to do for my own well-being and, you know, my own personal values, right? Like, so I think it’s accepting that like every family is going to look different and that nannies can also look different too. And I think there’s, you know, there’s different things to consider in that space. So like if somebody’s new and they’re going, hmm, I am exploring daycare, I am exploring a nanny, like what, what does this look like for our family? And like, you know, start the process of like, hello, nanny, somebody finds you. And they go, hmm, maybe I should look at nannies. Yeah, I mean, by the time they come to us, they’ve already decided that they are hiring a nanny or they’re exploring whether or not a nanny is affordable for them because having a nanny is a bit more of a luxury in terms of the cost, right? Think of it as in daycarecare it’s a co-op you’re paying you know 12 or 13 families are paying for that one teacher whereas a one-to-one ratio you’re paying that entire salary for that person so when you think about the cost of living you can attribute that to what the
cost of a nanny will be and so depending on whether that’s a part-time nanny whether that’s a full-time nanny or even just a mother’s helper what does that consist of and so a lot of times families have already made that decision by they by the time they come to us they could also be searching for a nanny on their own so looking on you know sites like care.com or sitter city um where they’re trying to find their own nanny or they’re in a facebook moms group in a nanny community on facebook there’s just so many ways nowadays with social media that you can source candidates um which is a double-edged sword, right? It’s kind of like the wild west. You’re looking
for a needle in a haystack. So yes, there are plenty of applicants out there, but are those applicants actually qualified is the question. And are you asking the right question? So a lot of families come to us after they’ve been trying to find their own candidate and their candidate quit after three days or quit after three weeks because it wasn’t a fit. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, oh, we had a nanny, but her mom got sick and she needed to go take care of her mom. Like, no, what it is, is that whatever situation they arranged or agreed to, they decided it wasn’t a good fit. And instead of saying, hey, this doesn’t work for me and going back to the drawing board to renegotiate, they just come up with an excuse as to why they’re unavailable and they have to resign. And so it’s very common that most nannies are not great at advocating for themselves. They’re not great at having those corporate level conversations where they can say, Hey, we need to go back to the drawing board and renegotiate my wage, because this is actually more than what we talked about before. You know, we talked about just taking care of the baby, but I didn’t realize that you also have a toddler who’s home two days a week, but you, you know, there’s this, there’s so many constituents that go into that. So anyway, the parents will come to us and say, well, we had a nanny, but she quit. And we’ve, you know, we can’t really find anyone and people stopped applying to our position. And so our agency is exceptionally skilled at really looking at that job requisition, understanding what they’re missing, why nannies or why candidates are no longer applying for that role. And they typically go with our DIY service if they are trying to take the search on their own.

And our DIY premier service offers that assistance with our recruiter. So they can do their own and they can even broadcast their job on our nanny job board to generate applicants. But they can
also pull in our recruiter for consulting. So to advise them on what are the market rates? What are we finding in that market? What are industry standards? What are you missing from that job requisition and recreate that job requisition and broadcast that on our job board to generate those leads. And most of the candidates that apply through agencies are actual career professionals because only the career professionals are familiar with an agency or even confident or comfortable working through an agency. And there’s a level of candidates that aren’t even on the groups, right? That aren’t on those self-serve platforms,
that aren’t in the mom groups, because they don’t want to go direct to the family. They really desire to go through the agency because they know that the agency upholds industry standards,
and that the agency is going to educate the families on bridging a sustainable work agreement. And I think that’s so important because there are so many correlations, right? Between
even like sleep consulting, right? Like DIY versus professional versus consulting, right? Like, what do you want? Do you want private one-to-one? Do you want us to come in home? Do you want
a DIY type solution, right? Like we try to serve the market in different places because there is a need in all the places, but you have to have the right expectations about the result based on whatever service it is you’re buying. Now, you know, in the space of what you’re doing, I think there’s a level of professionalism there’s background checks and proper negotiation to
your point. So everybody comes in without any resentment. Because I think what you’re explaining is like a lot of it becomes resentment, like you’re not paying me enough for all this work you’re expecting me to do. And that’s just the fact that boundaries were not clearly established at the start of a
relationship. It’s like any type of a relationship, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s a nanny or, you know, a house cleaner or my husband and I, you know, here’s what we’re going to do together. Here’s what we do separately, right? Like there’s in
any relationship, there has to be clear expectations and boundaries. And I think having a professional, to your point, this is a professional job, right? Like whether it’s a part-time job or a full-time job, it’s a career that people are choosing and that they bring a specific level of professionalism with. And I do think that to your point, those career professionals
aren’t necessarily on the mainline mom’s group looking for a nanny, right? Like there’s nothing wrong with those groups, but I think it’s a different audience in what your expectations should be. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the most important thing is that, you know, when you
partner with a nanny that you are upholding those industry standards and that’s where there’s so many intricacies. And I was guilty when I had my nanny because I was new to hiring support. And so having my nanny, it was the first time I had that support
and I didn’t know about the nanny industry. I didn’t know that nannies were even a thing. And so I was doing things that were frowned upon. Fortunately for me though, my nanny was comfortable and she was very, she’s a seasoned nanny and she was comfortable and had enough rapport with me where she felt comfortable
and safe saying, Hey Steph, um, that’s actually like a bad practice. Right. And, um, I would say, what do you mean? And she, and so she explained it to me and I was like, Oh wow, that makes sense.
So, um, there were things that I was doing, uh, that were frowned upon naturally. I mean, it’s, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so a lot of parents are doing those things. And where as the agency, what I’ve done is I’ve become immersed in this industry to really
understand this industry and become an expert of it to guide families and to say, hey, don’t do this. Make sure you’re doing this. I’m sorry. My daughter is always calling me.
That’s okay. Sorry to interrupt the recording. So essentially that’s really what we do is we bridge that gap for families that are hiring that support and educating them and doing all of those things,
because it really is a deal breaker. It is a game changer on really knowing and understanding the best practices to set you up and that candidate up for success. So traditional nanny role, right? Obviously you have a night nanny, right? Sometimes people will use
that term when they come home postpartum and they’re like, I hired a night nanny. And there are expectations around that position and what they’re going to be doing and, you know, middle of the nights and stuff, right? Then you have the daytime nanny, which I think a lot of
people are familiar with, right? And expectations around that. And I think to your point, when you bring in a professional, right? It’s just like looking for a job, any job. And this is a job, right? What would I do if I was going back to corporate and I wanted to go back to work in marketing or sales operations?
I would hire a recruiter. Why? Because they know the market rates. They know the companies you want to work for. They know the companies you want to stay away from. And they’re advocating on your behalf to get you the highest salary possible because they get a percentage of that, you know, from a payment standpoint.
Right. of that, you know, from a payment standpoint, right? But they’re looking out for your best interest. Whereas a company, if you’re going direct to the recruiter, they’re going to be like, uh, 40 grand. I think that’s great. The recruiter’s like, no, no, 60 grand. You know what I mean? Like just using numbers where it’s like, you, you have to understand the space you’re dealing with.
And sometimes going direct is not the best for anybody because you’re ill-prepared as the family and the nannies potentially ill-prepared in the responses, right? Well, and yes. And to your point is as parents, we’re expected to wear hats that we’ve
never worn before, right? So it’s like, go out there and recruit. Well, when you’re working for a fortune 500 company and you need to add a salesperson to your team, you delegate that to your recruiting team and you say, Hey, find me the best salesperson. And then I’ll, I’ll interview them and see if they’re a culture of it. Right?
So as parents, we go take our vehicle to the car shop when it needs an oil change. We delegate that to the expert to change our oil. But for some reason, when it comes to hiring for our children, our most prized possessions,
we’re like, yeah, I’m going to do this myself. I got this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to recruit. I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t know anything about the industry, but I’m going to give it a shot. And so that’s really what we do is we give them interview questions, a guide. We give them working
trial tips. We give them, if they do their own reference checks, if they’re doing the DIY, we give them the reference check questions to ask. All of the things that you need from onboarding guides to offer letter templates, to work agreement templates, all of those things we do.
Another thing is fraudulently or not fraudulent references and fraudulent certifications. They’re out there. That whole fake it till you make it, that exists in this industry. And as a nanny agency, we are really skilled at being able to differentiate a fake certification
from a real certification. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across someone that was fraudulent. We would reach out to that issuing institution and they wouldn’t even have that person as a student ever. Wow. That’s so crazy to me. I see it a lot in the sleep consulting space too. Like
everybody’s sold this dream of like, you can become a baby sleep coach or a certified sleep consultant and it’s only going to cost you $5,000 and it’s a DIY course and you get the whole business in a box and then you’re a sleep consultant. It’s like,
whoa. And it’s really just somebody’s high ticket coaching program. And they don’t care if you’re successful. They don’t care anything about your qualifications or your background. Or if you’re three sheets left of center, if you’re willing to pony up five grand or 10 grand, they’ll take you.
And it’s just the industry in the space I’m in is not regulated. And so it is crazy. The people that I see that come in as like new baby sleep coaches, they’re doing it like from their closet while their kids napping one hour a week as like a hobby.
And they’re just it’s terrible advice. I see it with the clients I work with. I’m like, who told you to do that, you know, and people don’t understand that there’s a level of professionalism as a career in doing this, you know, not while you’re at your kids
hockey game answering WhatsApp calls. And there’s nothing wrong with offering that type of support in your programs. But I think to your point, like my husband’s the CFO of a commercial lumber company today. Tomorrow he could be a certified baby sleep coach for $250. And he can have the fanciest Instagram handle ever,
but you’re not like, you’re, you’re not really experienced in any capacity to support that role as a parent, like focusing on a tiny human. And I just don’t think parents understand that. And it seems like it’s the same with nannies. Like I always joke about the like
references available upon request. Nobody’s going to put a bad reference on a resume. You know what I mean? Like they’re like, why would you? So how do you vet people? I think that’s a great point
though, like about the quality of Hello Nanny. How do you vet people with their references or to your point, checking their certifications and making sure that like they meet those standards of care and quality.
So you’re not just kind of getting somebody off the streets, you know. You’d be surprised. So the internet is an amazing place. It can be an amazing place where when you check a reference and then you go and you do a social media audit and then you find that that reference is actually their cousin, you know, or their aunt or that, you know, it’s not a legitimate reference. You just put the pieces to the puzzle together. You can do enough of a search or even
once you do the background check and then that reference is tied to them in their background. You know, there’s a lot of ways to catch those nuances. And we’re really good at asking questions that you can read between the lines on whether or not it’s a legitimate reference. So it’s a
little bit of an art. Yeah. Which is great because I think, again, you’re vetting people to take care of a child, you know? I look back at like daycare photos when my son was at daycare and it was a very small
daycare near our house that was not, you know, a corporation, if you will, right? And I like they sent me a picture. They’re like, Oh, look, Max is sleeping. And I’m like, Oh, my God, he has his boppy in the crib.
He’s in the under one room. And you know what I mean? Like, but I look back then and I was like, oh, that photo is so cute. But I’m like, holy crap, that’s not safe sleep. But like, I didn’t know better at the time. I knew better at home, but it didn’t dawn on me in the moment at daycare that I had
to worry about that. And like, so when I picked him up that day, I was like, oh, that photo is cute. Can you make sure it doesn’t sleep with the boppy anymore? Like, okay, you know, and the owner was very good about it. But it’s just like, oh my gosh, you know, like they’re high, like they
turned through a lot of teachers when my son was at daycare, you know, and they’re high, like they turned through a lot of teachers when my son was at daycare, you know, and at the time that was 10 years ago. And it was, you know, it was possibly then but not terrible considering how much money my husband and I made, you know what I mean? So it was fine. But for many, it was cost prohibitive. But like now it’s double. And again, you’re still
dealing with like that high turnover, who’s in there? What you know, what are they doing? You know, that’s a tough, the daycare side of things is a tough industry. And I didn’t love some of the people that were there, but what was I supposed to do?
You know what I mean? To your point, like pull them out. I was ignorant at the time about it, you know, but in hindsight now it’s like, oh my gosh, like why did I not just hire a nanny to manage both and do so much more from an engagement
and an enrichment standpoint than frankly I would have done as a stay-at-home mom. Even if you don’t need to work, having a nanny is like super helpful in a variety of capacities for managing mental health, maternal mental health, your child’s
development. Like I would not have sat and done certain things with my kids the way a nanny would or different experiences or, you know, lessons and such. Like I just, I know myself as a parent, like there are things we are great at and there are things we are just not great at. And I think having a nanny that
fills those gaps that ultimately becomes a partner in raising your child, not a replacement, which is parents is how we see it. Like, oh, they’re not, they’re raising my child now. Like, no, they’re not. They’re supporting the family unit. I made a post on social media two days ago because I see
a lot of the like fair play husband, wife conversations. And I do agree that there are many marriages that do not have clear, I don’t want to say boundaries or rules or whatever you want to call it, right? My husband and I are very open in communication.
We talk about what needs to be done. I was just talking to my girlfriend who is a sleep consultant in DC this morning. And she was like, he just comes home and asks what he wants me to do. She’s like, I don’t know, do the dishes. Like look in the sink, you know? My husband and I, like we are very much like divide and conquer.
We are a team. We see the laundry needs to get done. We fold it. We see that the kid’s room has feathers from their pillow. We vacuum it. You know what I mean? Like, there’s no like, what do you need me to do? It’s like, I don’t know, man, you’re a totally capable human too.
And we attack things as a team together, you know? But I think a nanny, we have a unique relationship and we’re very much open about the communication, right? Not everybody functions that way. And I think people need more guidance, right? In certain situations.
But like a nanny is meant to be a part of that unit that brings support to the parenting unit, not acts as a like sort of adversary trying to take your kids. And I think that perspective shift on that is super important. Yeah. And that’s
going back to what you were saying about the cost of daycare, right? And how the cost of nannies is exponential in comparison to daycare. And so with that, it’s actually one of the reasons why I started a fixed fee model. So most agencies charge anywhere between 15 to 25% of your nanny’s annual salary. So
I started this because I was, you know, from, I’m from the San Francisco Bay area, one of the top markets, one of the highest markets for rates. And those placement fees were upwards
of 30 to $40,000. So you went into it with a lot of ambiguity, not knowing how much is this going to cost me to hire this person through the agency? And so I created a fixed fee model where we’re transparent. We’re upfront. There’s no conflict of interest. We have no vested interest
in what families are paying the nannies. So we can come back and we can say, Hey, without any conflict, here’s what we’re finding when we’re interviewing candidates, they’re commanding X for this rate. Ultimately nannies drive their rates. And so I’m not, I’m coming back to the family and telling them and giving them this
feedback, not because I want them to pay more for a nanny because my placement fee is the same, regardless of who they hire, but because I’m trying to, I’m giving them a temp, um, a pulse
of the market to say, this is probably why you’re having a hard time finding someone that’s willing to take the position is because this is the going rate in that market. Yeah. And I can do that without any conflict of interest. So going back to like that fixed fee
model, that’s why I created it. And so I think in that regard, we are revolutionizing the nanny industry because there’s no other agencies that are doing that or even doing like the DIY where
we’re giving families access to the agency model, our agency app tools, resources here. Absolutely. We want you to feel empowered. We want you to hire with confidence. And so that’s really what we’re doing. Which I think is just to your point, like revolutionary in the space where there’s,
you’re their advocate. You know what I mean? Like you are their advocate, but there’s also a reality to expectations, you know? And I think looking at also like, okay, you hear the term au pair a lot,
right? We have a live-in au pair, right? I know that you offer the live-in services as well. So talk a little bit about like the different types of nanny services that you offer, right? Because you mentioned kind of like mother’s helper, part-time,
full-time, right? And then live-in, which what are the different, I would say like explanations of that, you know, just for our listeners, again, some who are probably trying to figure out like, I want to go down the nanny route for a variety of reasons. And, you know, how do I, how do I know
what’s going to be the best fit? So, I mean, everyone’s experience is different with au pairs. I’ve heard good stories of au pairs. I’ve heard nightmares of au pairs. You have to bear in mind that most au pairs are coming from abroad.
And their passion is not child care. It is, I’m young. I want to travel. I want to live my life. Most of them are looking to fall in love. And then they find their boyfriend. So they’re great. This is a very common denominator that I find that I, the feedback I’ve had from families is
they’re great at first, but then they meet a boy and then they’re like unreliable and their social life is more important and they couldn’t care less about my kids or my family. Right. And why they even came here to begin with. And so that’s really the difference is you’re getting much younger kids that are 18, 19 years old from
another country who are looking to come and travel. And they do that kind of through the loophole of being an au pair. And then there’s the live-in nannies who, yes, they come in at a higher rate. Definitely not anything compared to an au pair. But they have a background in early childhood education. They are very familiar with the Montessori
style of teaching. They are very familiar with developmental milestones, personality styles. For example, when my nanny came in, so as a second time mom, I was very confident. Like I’ve got this,
I, you know, this is my second go around. And I’ll tell you, it made me realize that I was lucky the first time with my daughter. My daughter was a very easy, compliant kid, did what she was told, didn’t talk back. And my son came out of the womb
talking back. Second child syndrome. I am not kidding when I’m saying he’s in his high chair eating solids and, you know, I’m going to cut you with a fork. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, just, I could not get the, I could not get compliance from this kid and I would get
so frustrated. And then I’d watch my nanny work with him and just be like, all right, Jesse, it’s time for a bath. Would you like to take a bath or would you like to take a shower? And he’d be like, bad. If I say, all right, Jesse, come on, it’s bath time. Let’s go. And he’s like, no,
I’m like two completely different approaches there. Right. And so what I learned is that I was learning from my nanny. I was learning how to parent this child that is completely different than my daughter.
And so it made me realize, like, what nannies do is they bring a level of professional experience in working with children and handling different personality types and developing them. an education in childhood development, early childhood education, in education, in psychology,
you are doing parenting with brute force and ignorance. Yeah, no, totally. And I think this is like you’re raising a human. Again, there’s a level of professionalism that I would want in the caregiver for my family. And having a nanny who has been vetted, who has been reference checked, who knows what they’re doing, who can come in and go, Hey, well, this is great,
but here’s maybe where I’d make some adjustments in your situation, right? Like just all the things, like there’s nothing from a downside standpoint, you know? And then I would, I would take that one step further into say, um, when parents say, well, my kid’s really easy. You just like, he just takes
care of himself practically. I just need a set of eyes and a body there to, you know, make sure he doesn’t hurt himself and get hurt. but otherwise like he doesn’t require too much right and so you’re sure um and so i it’s kind of i i have to reframe myself because i’m
thinking zero to five years are the most crucial years for that foundation of your child’s brain and their development and all those things and so no like your baby just sitting there doing nothing and not being tended to and not being like that
is very impactful later on for them. So I, you know, it is very important that parents look at it through that lens and that they value the contribution of whoever’s caring for their child.
And that, um, when they are hiring someone that it is a, it’s a big decision. This person is going to influence your child’s first five years of life or two, however long they’re with
you in those first years, it’s a very big decision. It’s a very important decision who you hire. Yeah, absolutely. So talk to me a little bit about the process, right? So they come to Hello Nanny and they want you to help them in their hunt for the nanny, right? Talk a little bit about what
that looks like. I know you mentioned there are some DIY diy but let’s say we wanted your help in concierge level like i want you to help me this is we’re hiring you this is important to our family right what does that look like yeah so um we do an intake with the family to understand their needs
um we you know hear about what they’ve done what they haven’t done what’s working what’s not working and then if they’re interested in our concierge service what we do is we hand them off to our recruiter.
Our recruiter will do an intake with them in addition to the intake that our intake team does. So our intake team is going to get like the meat and the potatoes. What is the ideal schedule? What is your budget? Are you and we actually we actually qualify our families.
So we don’t work with every family. We do have an expectation with families that they agree to uphold industry standards. Some of those industry standards are legal pay, for example. And so if they aren’t willing to uphold those standards, then we would say we’re not a fit
here, but you can go hire on your own and here’s all the tools that you need to do it. However, if they are willing and agree to uphold industry standards, then we will accept them as a client because that’s really what sets our agency if they knew that we didn’t value
and hold families accountable for that. So what we do is pass them off to the recruiter. Recruiter does the intake. From there, we will create their job requisition, send it to them for their
approval. Once approved, we will broadcast that to our existing network of candidates. And then we will also broadcast that well beyond our network. So on the internet, on recruitment sites, we actually use an ATS,
so an applicant tracking system that a Fortune 500 company would use. So when families are hiring our agency, we are a legitimate recruiting agency that is recruiting on your behalf. Some agencies are, when they work with a family, they’ll say, you know, we’ll tap into our talent
pool and we’ll see what kind of referrals we get and just wait and see if a fish bites, right? But we don’t. We are proactive. We go out there. We hunt. We generate candidates, leads for that family on their behalf.
We will also interview those candidates and screen them. So I would say about every two out of 10 applicants are actually presented to the family. So we are not wasting the family’s time with every applicant. I would say, you know, a family might see four to 10 applicants and 10 is
like a lot for a concierge family, but I would say four to six is a good number that we present to them. But of those four to six, you can bet that we interviewed 40 to 60 candidates to get those
four to six. Yeah. It wasn’t. And so a lot of families that you’re getting the best of the best, you know? Right. So a lot of families that work with us, they’re like, wow, that was so easy. Like you found me a nanny just like that. And it’s like, well, yes, but you didn’t see everything behind the scenes that went into
finding those golden nuggets, right? Yeah. So we make it look really easy, but it’s not. There are a lot of interviews that happen behind the scenes that families don’t see. So we will, as concierge, we will coordinate the, we’ll present the profiles.
We will schedule the interviews. We will schedule the working trials. We will determine and define all of the constituents of that working trial and what it looks like and compensation and all the things.
So there’s no gray. It’s very black and white and clearly defined on what that expectation is. And then once they’ve decided to hire, then we will pursue reference checks, social media audits, background checks,
gather vetting items, and then also help with submitting the offer letter. So in our app, we can actually have communication between parents and nannies on demand in a group chat.
And in that group chat, they can execute and send over an offer letter that can be signed within the app. And same thing with the work agreement, the work agreement template. It’s a 25 page comprehensive attorney drafted work agreement.
So all of the things that you can run into in this industry that, you know, you don’t know until you are in it and you’re knee deep and you’re like, oh boy, we didn’t think about that. We should have included that in the work agreement. We have all of that. So when they run into those situations, they can go to their work agreement and go, this is in here.
It’s addressed. This is how we handle this. And that can make or break a placement. So we help with executing digital signing of that. The families fill it out. It’s kind of a plug and play type of document. But otherwise, we will help with the execution of that and then onboarding guide.
And if throughout that relationship there’s ever a situation that arises with the family. We’ve had families reach out to us and say, Hey, we’re feeling a certain way about a situation with our nanny. And how do we approach this? And so really just serving as a resource to them to say,
this is how you should navigate it. Or that’s not normal. That’s not okay. What that candidate is doing. This is what you should do. And so really just giving them that guidance and industry experience.
And then same thing goes for nannies. There’s nannies who will reach out to us and say, hey, my nanny family is doing X. How do I breach this conversation or how do I have this conversation? So we really do help to mend fences in partnerships
should any issues ever arise and really just serve as that liaison between that bridging that disconnect between nannies and families. Which I love. I mean, it’s just everything you’re doing is just so amazing in support of finding the right fit for a family, right? And I think helping
people to understand that this is a part of that family unit, you know, and I think it’s just so cool. I think it’s so cool what you’re doing. I’m excited for Hello Nanny and I’m excited just in the months that I’ve known you to see it continue to grow and thrive. And certainly anyway, you know, our team here at Tiny Transitions can be supportive of that
because I think it’s changing the stigma around asking for help just overall and that it is okay and acceptable to do so and to do it with a professional tact, you know, and I
want confidence to know who is helping as our family unit support to know that the person that we’re bringing in does mesh with us, you know, and I have the same beliefs with tiny transitions and who I bring on
to be sleep consultants. I get solicited every day. Like we want to join your team. Are you hiring? I’m like, absolutely, you know, absolutely not right now, but you know, share your information. And I can tell pretty quick just from a conversation, like you are just not a good
fit, you know? And I think I’m a professional, so I understand what I’m looking for. You know what I mean? And I think there are a lot of parents that just don’t, it’s maybe their first time hiring a nanny and bringing in the professional. You know, I heard a quote once that said, if you think hiring a professional is expensive,
try hiring an amateur. And the quote always stuck with me because people will say tiny transitions is a more expensive sleep consulting agency. I’m like, it’s fine. Hire the cheap one. You’ll be back, you know? So it’s really just understanding that the professionalism aspect, the career driven aspect of it. And then frankly, just being an advocate for you as the family,
I think is super important. So you’ll find by doing it this way, I believe the right people who want to work in the capacity of, you know, bringing a nanny into the family unit. So I’m excited for that. How can people learn more about Hello Nanny? Obviously, hellonanny.com. But,
you know, tell the folks a little bit more about how to find you. Yeah, so they can go to hellonanny.com or we are on Instagram. Hellonanny.com is our handle. It’s the, it’s hellonanny, D-O-T-C-O-M, the handle is.
And then we’re on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn page and we also have a Facebook page. So we are constantly contributing content to those pages just to give little tidbits about the industry. So all the things that, that I just breached the surface on in this conversation today. We just share little
things. Like the other day, we posted a video about a nanny’s car and its tidiness and how that plays in for nannies. And then also from a family perspective, how that plays in for families. So I actually saw that post and I was like, she’s right. And I just washed my car. I have a car
wash membership because I’m like, I want my car to be clean. I want the children to get, like I washed my weather tech mats just this morning because there’s salt all over them from the snow. Like that is a reflection of me. Like I don’t want kids getting in my car that are like,
ew, your mom’s gross, you know? So. Well, yeah. And for families, you know, so anyway, those in families, they don’t realize that your kids are also being transported by your nanny in their car. And those kids are probably dropping crumbs and stuff
all over your nanny’s car. And your nanny’s car and your nanny’s car is destroyed. Just like they destroy your car, they destroy your nanny’s car. And so monthly car washes is something that families should consider, right? It’s just a gesture to say, Hey, we care about
you. We know, um, our kids are feral and they, you know, they mess up the car token of appreciation to say, we, you know, we want to make sure that we’re taking care of you the same way you take care of us.
And it’s just those little nuances that, you know, families can go and follow our socials for to learn all of the nuances in the industry as they go. So that way, if they’ve hired a nanny on their own or they currently have a nanny and it’s that they can follow those pages to learn about managing that relationship with their nanny.
Which I love. This is great. I appreciate you so much for being on, Stephanie. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Go out and follow. We’ll put all the links in the notes as well. Go out and follow Hello Nanny. Check out hellonanny.com and follow hellonanny.com over on Instagram. So thank you
so much for joining us today. And we hope that lots of our kids sleep show listeners jump out and inquire where it’s the right fit for the services you provide because it’s definitely a game changer. So thank you. Likewise. Thanks for what you do. I wish I knew about sleep
consulting when I had my kids because I did not sleep train them. And I watched my sister do it. And I watched the amount of like balance that she has in her life because of the sleep consulting.
I was like, gosh, you mean my life could have been easier in that infant phase? They would have slept through the night. Oh, you know, so well, you know so well you know likewise we’re always happy to again empower parents
and provide support where where it is most needed so thank you for tuning in yeah thanks for having me one more thing before you go don’t forget to subscribe leave a review or share this episode with someone you know who could use a
little more sleep in their life for tips and resources be sure to visit us at tiny transitions comm or follow us across social media. Here’s to better sleep, brighter days, and healthier lives.