We look for a number of things on a great nanny candidate CV but generally we look for consistency and professionalism. We require nannies to have a minimum of two years childcare experience, who are over 21 years old and who have stayed in one childcare role for a year at the very least. We receive some superb quality candidates at Nanny Network – most of our nannies are highly educated, well travelled and come with other fantastic musical, sporty or language skills. We always look for something special rather than a CV with just tons of nanny experience. We have all kinds of nannies on our books from junior to senior and everything in between.

During the pandemic, we had to make some crucial changes in order to survive as a company. The biggest change we made was the switch to using video interviews. We started these as live interviews before using automated ones. The automated ones work just as well as live interviews if not better. The recordings of these interviews are made available to parents – we got great feedback from parents using the videos to help them find a nanny so we continued in this way. We still hold special event days where our nannies can come in person to meet us, ask questions and meet other team members. We also run regular social meet-ups for the nannies.

PS – On the nanny profiles today you will see a combination of live and automated video interview recordings because of the change we made halfway through creating this new platform.

We use our decade long experience to select the best nannies to join our team. It’s hard to exactly describe what makes a nanny stand out but we choose candidates based on a combination of the CV, interview answers, how a nanny communicates with us behind the scenes, and what previous employers have said about the nanny. Qualities we look for in a good nanny aside from experience are – politeness, calmness, a deep understanding of children, genuine curiosity about child development, knowledge of milestones, integrity, ability to be discreet, a cheerful positive personality and of course a big smile! Typically we choose nannies who have a more gentle approach to childcare – but we have nannies of all backgrounds and who provide all kinds of care. We mean it when we say – we are building London’s NICEST network of nannies!

While we have nannies who are qualified nurses or teachers (who come up to their eyeballs with certification) we also have nannies who don’t yet have a DBS or First Aid Training. Since the pandemic we take a softer approach on this, quite simply because it costs a job seeker money to process a DBS certificate or to book a day of first aid training. To keep things fair we advise parents to have an open mind when looking at potential candidates and if you find a nanny you like but who does not yet have their certificates in place – you can offer them a job based on the condition they will have these certificates ready before the job starts.

We used to process DBS certificates and offer in house first aid training but we now work with a third party who specialises in these.

While we were an agency, before we built our platform, we would receive copies of handwritten references from nannies, often very old, and not very clear to read. The old school method of taking a photo of a reference and sending it with an application is quickly becoming outdated. We also don’t think this is a very secure method of collecting recommendations as those references could have been written by anybody and they don’t always come with a phone number to check. On the other hand, parents often feedback to us on how annoying it is to have many phone calls from agencies or parents looking to employ a nanny when they have already offered a detailed reference on paper.

Therefore, we have devised a very simple way a parent can offer a recommendation for a nanny, its a well designed and modern online form – it doesn’t take them very long to fill it in (only 5 minutes) and they just need to answer a series of questions mainly using a checkbox and rating system. Its a quicker and safer method for us to ask for nanny recommendations over typing or writing a reference out.

If you have any questions about our screening process, please feel free to email us on hello@nannynetwork.co.uk and we are more than happy to help!