Seeking An Educated (and Mandarin speaking) Nanny

[MumInTraining]

Hi, we are a young family about to have our first baby and are looking for a fabulous nanny to join Team Plus One. I (the Mum) am planning to go back to work 3 months after the birth and work very long hours so am hoping to find someone with the following characteristics and will provide commensurate pay/conditions:
- full-time live-in
- ideally university degree educated
- experienced raising and teaching children
- responsible, very reliable, committed
- able to feed, love and care for our new family addition
- help us educate and raise plus one
- no apartment cleaning necessary
- fluent in written and spoken English a must
- ideally also Mandarin speaking
- ideally committed to stay with us for 2 years at least
We are looking for much more than a helper. We are looking for an extension to our family support network and someone we can trust to care for our newborn both physically and mentally. I look forward to hearing from you!

 

[elle]

Have you talked to any of the nanny agencies yet? It took us quite a while to find our nanny and the visa procedure was a little more time consuming and difficult than hiring a domestic helper. We initially posted a few ads but found that having an outside agency do the initial vetting (and verification of education and experience) was very helpful.

 

[sansaneveritt]

elle- which agency did u use? how's your nanny-is she good with children,speaks mandarin?

 

[elle]

elle- which agency did u use? how's your nanny-is she good with children,speaks mandarin?

We ended up hiring through Norland in England. Our nanny does not speak Mandarin, but that was never a criteria for our family. She is great with our child, but our first nanny was not as she had some issues with late nights at the pub. I have never meet or even heard of a nanny fluent in both English and Mandarin and the English language was the priority for our family. it's hard enough finding a professional banker/ lawyer/ accountant who is fluent in both and my guess is that someone with true fluency in both languages also has a pretty high education level and doesn't do domestic work. There are also visa hurdles if you want to hire someone from the mainland for Mandarin language skills, but I have heard of agencies who recruit nannys from Taiwan and Malaysia, so that might be worth looking into if Mandarin is a high priority.