That was the short version. Read on for the detailed process from decision-making leading up to setting an ETA for our Au Pair's trip from WuHan to LAX, and ultimate delay...potential cancelation:
Our journey to becoming a host family began in the middle of the night, among the many sleepless nights that come with pregnancy, and charting out a plan for juggling 2 kids under 2…I was on my phone, under the covers, looking up information on what an Au Pair actually is (some parent friends had mentioned it earlier that day). Then, my thumbs just naturally registered our family to access a candidate search portal, after answering a few questions about our childcare needs. While researching and filling out questionnaires, it became pretty evident that cost of care will be a huge determining factor. Ah, but there’s a bonus factor for us: We are determined to provide a multilingual environment for our children, and now we can import the language environment into our own home!
The hard part was finding the right agency because their reach is very different, and access to care is dependent on whether there is a representative located within 50 miles of where we live…because that person has to initially interview us and survey our living space to make sure we are host worthy, and be able to check in once the au pair arrives. During the process, I recorded and compared the preliminary cost for the various agencies on this Google Sheet, though it excludes living expenses like food and cell phone bills, etc. The top agencies that met our criteria and could service the Santa Barbara area - AKA “greater Los Angeles region” - were: Great Aupair USA and Cultural Care.
Cultural Care granted me full access to their candidates upon registration, which is $75, but waived using their discount code. They are the only ones who have a Santa Barbara representative (Local Care Coordinator) and were plugged into the local community, so invited us to several events that allowed us to get to know them and their au pairs better in person. Their Matching Coordinator was based in Colorado, and I had to schedule a time to talk, so she can recommend candidates to us based upon our needs. Super nice and attentive service, you can tell they spend a lot of effort on the vetting process, and they subject their au pairs to a week-long training in New York before sending them our way. They, however, didn’t have a big Chinese speaking pool to choose from, though it did grow a bit over the months. We corresponded with 4 potential candidates, ended up interviewing 2 via Skype / WeChat, did not match with either.
Great Au Pair USA allowed me to filter and search through their candidate pool pretty easily, and for FREE upon registration. Their representative had to drive over from Oxnard (40 mins away), but their matching coordinator (Account Executive) was a total gem. She’s based in Texas, super experienced, responds right away, can be reachable by phone or email directly, no prior scheduling required. There’s no in-State training, so they could cut out any extra costs there, which makes them the cheaper option. For us though, it’s the fact that they have a China center - where they have staff on-site to vet and train Chinese candidates - that got my attention. We corresponded with 8 potentials, interviewed 5, proceeded to chat and conduct second interviews with 2, and matched with 1.
GreatAupair.com, Great Au Pair USA’s sister site for nanny/babysitter search without agency involvement, is kind of like an international version of Care.com without the subscription fee. However, unlike Care.com, the candidates are not vetted, so there could be fraudulent accounts listed. The great part was that I could find a person from anywhere in the world, based upon the language(s) they speak, and coordinate with them directly for hire. The problem with that is we’d have to screen them like crazy and help them navigate and secure a visa to get to the U.S. My inner optimist did look into this option and preferred it initially because we could then expand our search for older, more experienced, nannies from Hong Kong or Singapore (where visa acquisition was not as tough at the time), or who are already in the U.S., and coordinate with them. However, after 4-5 interviews, it was evident that if they are from overseas, it will require more logistical planning than I had brain cells for; and the ones in the U.S. sounded like flight risks, who could just bail on us whenever they want.
Why Go Through an Agency? This one I grappled with for a long time because I’d much rather pay the $9,000 agency fee to our au pair than some third party. However:
- Going through an agency ensures that this person will be vetted and subject to a set of structured rules in place, built over years of experience overcoming unforeseen adversities. If the au pair violates the agreement set by the agency, they run the risk of losing their visa and have to be sent back to their country. It’s like having a system of checks and balances in place just in case things go south.
- The agency conducts monthly check-ins to make sure we’re happy with our au pair and if not, to intervene and assist in finding a replacement from their big pool of other vetted candidates. The word on the street is that they are more attentive to Host family needs than the au pair’s needs, which makes sense because we’re the paying customers. Though we are reminded to set our boundaries and not exceed 10 hours of work per day, or 45 hours total per week, and provide at least 1.5 days off each week…Not a problem for us.
- They deal with securing a visa for the au pair, cover the cost of airfare, and deal with the nitty-gritty logistics, so we don’t have to. Knowing that it’ll be our 1st year with 2 kids under 3 years old, I’d happily outsource the international travel arrangement job to the professionals.
- To reiterate, we did try to find an in-home nanny in the U.S. through local bulletins, Care.com, GreatAuPair.com, and it seemed like that would’ve been ideal, but the candidates that seemed to have infant care experience, who also speaks Chinese, either didn’t exist, were too young, sounded like they would come for the wrong reasons, or were probably phishing scam bots who tried to avoid video chatting with us.
- Once word of the pandemic broke out, it became more worthwhile to have agency support, to stay abreast of changing border policies, and help navigate the government websites that inevitably sends their visitors in a stress-inducing loop. Once you took all of the above into consideration, especially the time spent on each, the agency’s profit margins are really not that high.
