Recruitment

My wife is urgently looking for a fulltime assistant for her business, but is struggling to find quality candidates. Does anyone have any suggestions of where she can either look or advertise?

Well I guess agencies are the obvious, if more expensive route. No guarantee of course, though many will have clauses to do another search \ refund if the candidate leaves within a certain time period.

Indeed.com you can search for free, CV library sometimes do promotions for 24 hour access etc.

LinkedIn of course has many people on it, and is free, to a degree.

You could try sites likes mumsnet or others for people who might be struggling to get back into employment but who will be skilled, but tend to be looked over due to the gap in their work history etc.

You could also try a job centre of course.

Not sure on how this works if your wife is effectively a sole trader, but the apprentice scheme is changing and I think can be aimed at any age, not sure about this field.

I suppose it depends what the actual requirements \ hours are.

If customer friendliness for example is the main thing, you could try just recruiting someone from Pret or Starbucks who will already be well trained on customer service and will be hired on the basis of their friendly character (that’s just an example but you could find something laterally that might have the same transferable skills your wife is looking for).

Hope that helps to an extent.

What’s the job description?

Natalie Morris of Renato Recruitment posts jobs occasionally on the Penge Tourist Board Facebook page. renatorecruitment.co uk

Thanks for the tips, all.

I probably should have given more detail, but it’s as a childminder’s assistant, so the basic requirements are : reliable, trustworthy, good with children and available Monday to Friday. She’d much prefer someone local as the “reliable” bit is all important. Qualifications, age, etc., not important, but must pass a DBS check (the new name for CRB).

Quite happy to pay to advertise if it guarantees returns, but an advert on Gumtree, for example, hasn’t been much help.

I think your best bet would be to advertise in local Primary School newsletters as many childminders would read these, plus they get to know each other at local playgroups etc so may know who is looking for work & they would have their DBS checks etc already in place. Also parents could give recommendations of childminders they have used but maybe no longer need their services.

Don’t think you have to pay for this as such, but just make a small donation

ETA If you print off some flyers I’ll happily have them in the shop for you.

I suspect there are specialist agencies you could go to. There are no guarentees, and their are good and bad agencies, but generally if they have the payment terms I referered to above, they have morre of a vested interest to find someone suitable.

If this situation however if you want someone local, I would start with se23mums on faceboook. There are always lots of requests on there for childminders \ nannies etc, with people recommending people they no longer use. There is also a hither Green mummies and daddies group you could try.

The advantage with the above is that it will be free, most people on it are local, and quite a few will already be DBS checked. It might not work, but would be a good place to start. You might want to drop their admin a courtesy email to explain you want to do this. Or you could just ask the same question on there - I’ve seen a few posts from mums looking to get back into work, who may be interested in something like this.

Good luck.

To be clear, we’re not looking for a childminder or nanny. If anyone had those qualifications around here, they’d almost certainly be gainfully employed themselves. We really after a school leaver or someone returning to work, or something like that. And her being a childinder means that she’s already asked around in the childminder groups, etc.

As for specialist agencies, there really aren’t any that I’m aware of. I keep suggesting that she quits the childminding and sets up her own agency as there’s clearly a demand…

For reference, here is the advert: https://www.gumtree.com/p/other-babysitting-nanny-jobs/childminder-assistant/1071971069

Better places to post it, much appreciated. I see it’s been up for 51 days and the number of suitable candidates has obviously not been high.

What about asking local colleges and maybe sixth forms? Especially ones that offer childcare qualifications. You might scoop someone up at the end of this academic year looking for work experience. They will have careers co-ordinaters.