care.com?

[7costanza]

Has anybody used this to find a nanny or babysitter? I think I'm going to need a mothers helper on Wednesdays while I work from home. My mom is helping out now, but she's driving me crazy already and I think I just need to pay someone for my own sanity. 

[jennlin]

i have not, but i have heard good things about it...you just have to make your best judgement call on it since there's no screening on who gets put on there or accuracy. since you're looking for mother's helper, i don't think it'd be that bad finding someone on there, since you'll be home, it'll be a lot less stressful.

[7costanza]

Thanks! I posted an ad and already have a few responses.

[thatsmypurse]

I've used it several times and had great success. You can request background checks on the sitters which is nice but I'd definitely go with your gut. I've found a couple of nannies when we went that route and now I have a couple of sitters that I use. I was definitely more comfortable hiring for the nanny since I knew I'd be home the whole time (I WFH) than the night sitter but I love our sitters now.

[thatsmypurse]

Oh, you will get a ton of applicants and a lot of them don't bother reading when you need them to determine if they can actually do that. I had a form questionnaire that I would send everyone to weed people out and then would meet them in a public place with C to see how they were with him and get a feel for them.

[shevacc]

thatsmypurse has great tips. I also found that a lot of the people who responded immediately were just looking for any job. But there were definitely a decent amount of people on there to make it worth it to me. We never ended up hiring anyone since we decided to stick with daycare and not go the nanny route after all.