Protect Your Child, Investigate Your Potential Nanny
Free criminal background checks are relatively easy to avail of over the Internet so there is simply no excuse not to use them in the process of hiring a nanny. You simply must not and cannot allow anybody to live in your home, take care of your children and attend family affairs without performing intensive and comprehensive background checks. Of course, free criminal background checks can be availed of but the results may not be as in-depth and as complete as the situation warrants. Fortunately, there are other methods with which to ensure that your nanny, either on a live-in or per-hour employment basis, can be trusted.
Personal Interviews and Reference Checks
Of course, when you are hiring a nanny either from an agency or from advertisements, you need to conduct personal interviews. These interviews provide for venues to ask important questions pertaining to the nanny’s approach to child discipline, previous childcare experiences, ability to handle emergencies, preferred working hours and duties, among others. You can also clarify the information listed in the résumé that you might have doubts about such as references and addresses. In essence, this is a form of free criminal background checks except that you act as the investigator.
Even when you are satisfied with your preliminary one-on-one background checks with the potential nanny, you must verify the references listed in the résumé even when she comes from a nanny-for-hire agency. You have to call the individuals listed as character and work references and interview them about the general work performance and problem areas they may have encountered when the nanny worked for them as well as the reasons for their termination of the nanny’s services. Keep your interview short, however, and don’t press for more answers than they can provide. If possible, you can even have free criminal background checks conducted on these former employers to determine that they are not in cahoots with the potential nanny. All these background investigations are very necessary to ensure your child’s safety in the hands of his/her nanny.
Comprehensive Background Checks
Free criminal background checks, as previously mentioned, are easy to access and avail of. There are, however, limitations to this method for conducting criminal background checks in the nanny hiring process. First, these background checks are too time-consuming as you will be made to wait while the online site searches through public records and databases. Indeed, even you can access these public sites and secure the information on your own! Second, these are not as comprehensive and as intensive as you want them to be especially with the life of your child at stake. Third, free criminal background checks are often not updated because the available public records are often based on the last reported information provided by the nanny. The danger here is that there might be information willingly withheld by the potential nanny that is not reflected in the public databases.
Indeed, instead of free criminal background checks, you can always have a reputable site that offers comprehensive background investigation at a nominal yearly fee usually pegged at $30-40. You can then avail of almost unlimited criminal checks on the nanny applicants, which is almost akin to free criminal background checks except that you get updated, comprehensive and intensive report. With it, you can protect your child by hiring a nanny with a clean record!
