How to Place An Ad for a Babysitter

The ideal place for you to post an ad that says 'Babysitter Wanted' or 'Looking for A Babysitter' is on a local community group forum or email list in your neighborhood. If this is not possible you should then consider placing an ad in your local newspaper,

Placing an ad in a newspaper is very straightforward but you want to keep it simple in order to keep costs down. Think quite simply of creating an ad that reads like the following sample –

Part Time Baby Sitter Wanted
Weekends and Evenings
River Heights Area
342-555-5555/647-000-5555
MrsWonderful@gmail.com
However before you go to the expense or the trouble of advertising anywhere on the internet to sell these books you should check out Craigslist. Craigslist is available in Canada and the United States and is the number one place to find babysitters looking for work.

To access the babysitter ads on Craigslist go to Craigslist.com and find your city. Click on it to go to your local Craigslist website. Under the “Community” heading, you should then click on the “Childcare.” On this page you’ll find listings for babysitters and nannies, or you can post a help wanted ad of your own.

However before you go to the trouble of posting your own it is always a good idea to browse through all of the nanny ads and see if any of them look promising. If they don't you can always write and post your own ad.

Keep your advertisement simple and short. You do not have to be as brief as when posting a classified ad. You can put more of your personality and requirements into the copy. Many of the ads on Craigslist are quite chatty and casual. Be sure to include the ages of your children, a description of the hours needed, the rate you want to pay, a description of the duties required and other necessary information. For instance, if you do not want a babysitter stepping outside to enjoy a smoke on your dime then it is fine to say so in the ad.

Never include any personally identifying information in any kind of ad on Craigslist. Your email and phone number is all they need to know. The beauty of using Craigslist is that you can use a blind ad that forwards into a Craigslist mailbox that keeps your email address concealed from everyone.

Once you get responses back through your email you can start phoning candidates and screening for them. Make sure you get at least three references and follow up on them!

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3 Things to Look for in a Babysitter

Sometimes when you are busy, when you are short on help, when there just aren't any other options available to you there is a temptation to just let anyone who is available babysit your kids.

Unfortunately this is not the greatest idea. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency in the United States 4 percent of the reported crimes committed against children in the form of neglect, assault or sexual abuse are committed by babysitter. This is why it is so important to really be able to assess the character and then predict the behavior of anyone that you hire to look after your child!

Lots of the time we assume that a friend or relative is the best choice to look after our kids. This is not always true unless the candidate has demonstrated to you that he or she is –
1. Mature
2. Responsible
3. Capable

As you know 'liking the person', familiarity with the person and even age may have nothing to do with this. Some of the most likeable people in the world don't like kids or may do you 'the favor' of looking after your kids because he or she feels obligated.

Furthermore familiarity with a person does not always mean that they are familiar with how to look kids or the basics of First Aid. In fact, if you really think about it, some of the people we are most familiar with in our lives, especially family members, tend to lean towards the dysfunctional side (but we love them anyway!)

Also, 'being responsible' does not necessarily come with age. There are lots of sixty year old out there that are much more thoughtless and reckless than the sixteen year old down the street.

Then there is the issue of capability. If you have a toddler going through the 'terrible twos' you do not want to have someone frail or nervous looking after your kid. You want someone who knows how to dry tears, bribe a kid out of it or give him or her Time-Out. You want someone skilled with children and someone who is able to 'make the call' about whether or not to take a trip to emergency if your child is hurt.
In a nutshell, you want an individual who is mature, responsible and capable because anyone who fulfills those three criteria is going to be someone that you can trust when you are not at home!

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