Matching Time Again

I'm a planner, so when it comes to matching with an au pair, I buck standard practice and start looking early. Since au pairs are such an integral part of our family, I need to know who the person who is going to be living in my home, taking care of my children and being a member of my family is going to be. Having that person chosen puts my mind at ease and helps me enjoy the rest of the year with my current au pair.

Despite my good intentions, when I officially kicked off the search, I felt like I was cheating on Celina!  The rules of the au pair program mean that host families only have each au pair for a year, or if we're lucky, two years.  That means we'll eventually be on the search, even if we currently have a German Mary Poppins.  As much as I worried about Celina feeling like she was being replaced, she turned out to be my biggest asset in the matching process.

When there are over 2,000 au pairs waiting to be matched, the search feels overwhelming. Where do you even start?  Well, when you have four children, that's where you start.  I wasted so much time my first two rounds of matching contacting au pairs who had no interest in caring for so many children.  Now that I'm an LCC with my agency, I'm finally privy to this information (why they won't make this information available to all host families is beyond me) and searched for au pairs who had indicated they are willing to care for four or more children. I then narrowed down the list based on a couple non-negotiables (native German-speaking, solid driving skills and available in early August).  Since I was frustrated by the lack of responses via e-mail last year, this time around I sent each candidate a short WhatsApp message.  According to Marcel, no one under the age of 25 checks e-mail, and Europeans especially, all use WhatsApp.

The search wasn't quite as frustrating as last year's, but still so time-consuming. I felt like my free time was consumed with a cycle of searching for au pairs, locking in their applications, having them reject us and then starting over again with another au pair. Most rejections came with the vague excuse about "not being a good fit," which I took to mean, "I don't want to go to Minnesota."  I didn't think anyone could reject us this time around due to our children, but there were people who didn't think they could handle four children so close in age or wanted to care for older children. 

The seven-hour time difference between Minnesota and Germany made scheduling Skype interviews challenging, but we somehow managed to interview five au pairs, sometimes more than once. I was so excited about our first interview.  The guy seemed perfect!  Before getting started, I asked him if he had any questions for me. I should have known the match was doomed when he asked me to explain more by what I meant when I described our house as "cluttered and cozy." Um, we have four children and a small house. Next question please. He then wanted to know exactly how many times I forget things. Huh?  Oh, yeah, I had written in our application about how we need an au pair who is flexible and able to go with the flow and doesn't get flustered or thrown off course by changes in the plan. As an example, if I forget to tell him that one of the kid's speech therapy appointments got changed to today, I need him to roll with it. He was very preoccupied by how many times this happens.  Let's be honest, stuff like this happens every day. Marcel and Celina hardly blinked. This guy clearly wasn't going to cut it. 

The second interview was with a wonderful young man from the same city as Marcel who even rooted for the same soccer team. After the first interview, it might not have been coincidence that I allowed all four children to run wild while I Skyped with applicant #2. The chaos didn't scare him off and I told him I needed him to speak to my current and former au pair, which he promptly did.  He wrote me back and said we were the first family he had spoken with and while he thought we were great, he had no comparison and wanted time to speak to other families.  I was completely fine with that because I really don't want to be the first and only family an au pair has spoken with.  When I texted Marcel the au pair's decision, he shot back, "He'll regret it."

We went on to interview two more who we thought we were trying to decide between. But neither one felt 100% right. Celina interviewed both and brought up the same nagging concerns Chris and i had identified. And then I stumbled upon "the one". What I've learned from round three of interviewing is that after you've narrowed down your search and read every little detail of an au pair's application and deemed the person "perfect" for your family, if he or she doesn't show the same level of enthusiasm, move on, and quickly. The woman we matched with responded instantly to my WhatsApp message and promised to follow up again as soon as she had read our profile, which she did. Her questions proved she had clearly read our profile and that her heart was in the right place.  

We ended up choosing this woman after what ended up being an expedited interview process because we liked her that much. Her extensive experience is almost identical to Celina's and her outgoing personality reminds me of Marcel. I not only had her interview with Celina, but also with Celina's best friend, who is extending with her host family and will be spending a lot of time with whoever becomes our next au pair. Celina's text message to me after the Skype call started with, "We are team Nina!" She mentioned talking to the au pair about "our family," which of course made my heart swell. 

Matching with an au pair is a stressful  process, even for an experienced host family. But through this process I got to learn that Marcel and Celina are in my corner and what a comforting feeling that was amidst all the rejection. Chris and I were no longer alone because Celina and Marcel felt the same rejection because it was their family and their kids the au pairs were rejecting.