You thought hiring a nanny would take two weeks, maybe three at the outside. You posted your job, you’ve been interviewing, and it’s now been over a month with no hire. You’re stressed because your maternity leave is ending or your current nanny just gave notice or you’re trying to return to work after relocating to San Francisco. You need someone yesterday, and the process keeps dragging on with no clear end in sight.
Here’s what we tell every frustrated family after twenty years placing nannies: finding an excellent career nanny who’ll stay with your family for years genuinely takes time. Usually six to eight weeks minimum, sometimes twelve weeks or longer for specialized positions or families with specific needs. And every time families try to rush the process to meet their timeline, they end up making hiring mistakes that cost them way more time and stress in the long run.
The families who successfully hire outstanding nannies who stay long-term? They accept from day one that this process can’t be rushed. They plan accordingly, they build in buffer time, and they prioritize finding the right person over finding someone fast. The families who treat nanny hiring like any other transaction they can expedite through urgency? They cycle through multiple nannies within a year, dealing with constant turnover and its cascading impacts on their children and household.
Let’s talk about why finding career nannies actually takes the time it takes, why there’s no real shortcut that doesn’t involve compromising on quality, and how to think about the search process in ways that don’t make you want to scream.
The Pool of Excellent Career Nannies Is Smaller Than You Think
You’re not looking for just any nanny. You’re looking for someone reliable, experienced, great with kids, trustworthy, professional, willing to work the hours you need, and available to start when you need them. That’s already a much smaller pool than “people who have childcare experience.”
In San Francisco’s competitive market, truly excellent career nannies with strong references and solid experience are usually employed. They’re working for families who value them and compensate them well. They’re not actively job searching unless their current position is ending due to circumstances beyond their control – families moving, kids aging out of needing care, families no longer needing full-time help.
The nannies who are immediately available and actively searching? Some are excellent professionals between positions through no fault of their own. But many are either new to professional nannying, left their last position under less-than-ideal circumstances, or have patterns that make long-term employment difficult for them. Sorting the genuinely excellent from the problematic takes time and careful evaluation.
Think about it this way: if you saw an incredible house listed in your ideal neighborhood at a fair price, would you assume something was wrong with it if it had been on the market for months? Probably. Same logic applies to nannies. The best ones get snatched up quickly by families who recognize quality. The ones who’ve been searching for months despite lots of experience might be searching that long for reasons you’ll discover if you hire them.
This doesn’t mean you should only consider nannies who are currently employed. But it does mean the pool of available, excellent, immediately ready career nannies is much smaller than the total number of nannies in your market.
Reference Checking Actually Takes Time If You Do It Right
Families who rush hiring often either skip reference checks entirely or do them so superficially that they miss warning signs. Thorough reference checking takes time, and you need to check multiple references for each serious candidate.
You’re not just calling previous employers and asking “was she a good nanny?” You’re having real conversations where you ask specific questions, listen for what they’re not saying, and gauge whether their descriptions of strengths and weaknesses match what you’re looking for. You’re asking about punctuality, reliability, how they handled challenging situations, why the employment ended, whether they’d rehire this person if circumstances allowed.
Each reference call takes fifteen to thirty minutes if you’re doing it properly. Most serious candidates should have at least three professional references from families they’ve worked for, ideally from the last five to seven years. That’s a minimum of forty-five minutes to ninety minutes of phone time per candidate, and that’s if you reach people on the first try. Often you’re playing phone tag, scheduling calls around people’s availability, leaving messages and waiting for callbacks.
Then you need time to process what you heard and compare it against your impressions from interviews. Sometimes references are glowing but don’t actually address the specific concerns you have. Sometimes references are positive overall but mention small things that are actually red flags for your situation.
Families who skip this step or rush through it end up hiring nannies whose references would have revealed problems if anyone had actually listened carefully. The two hours you invest in thorough reference checking for each finalist saves you months of dealing with a bad hire.
Multiple Interview Rounds Are Actually Necessary
Your first interview gives you initial impressions and basic information. It doesn’t tell you whether this person will actually succeed in your household with your specific kids. That’s why second interviews with kids present, working interviews, and sometimes even third conversations are standard practice for nanny hiring.
First interviews let you evaluate communication style, verify basic qualifications, assess professionalism, and determine whether someone’s worth serious consideration. You’re not making hiring decisions based on this conversation. You’re deciding whether to invest more time evaluating this candidate.
Second interviews where candidates meet your kids and interact with them in your home give you completely different information. You’re watching how they engage with children, how kids respond to them, whether they read your kids’ cues accurately, whether their stated approach to childcare matches their actual behavior. This can’t happen in first interviews in coffee shops or on video calls.
Working interviews where candidates spend a few paid hours or a full day actually doing the job while you’re home but not hovering show you their real skills and judgment. You see how they handle routines, how they problem-solve when things don’t go smoothly, how they communicate throughout the day, whether they take appropriate initiative.
Each of these stages takes time to schedule around everyone’s availability. Your serious candidates are often working full-time for other families and can only interview in the evenings or on weekends. You’re working and need to coordinate times when you’re available and your spouse is available and your kids are home. Finding times that work for everyone to do second and working interviews can take a week or two even when everyone’s trying to be flexible.
Families who try to collapse this into one quick conversation and a hire end up making decisions based on incomplete information. They hire nannies who interviewed well but can’t actually do the job, or who had great energy in a one-hour conversation but have communication issues that only show up over time.
The Best Candidates Have Other Options
When you find an excellent nanny, you’re usually not the only family interested in her. Strong candidates often have multiple families pursuing them simultaneously, which means everyone’s going through evaluation processes, checking references, and doing working interviews at the same time.
This means good candidates can’t give you immediate yes or no answers because they’re still evaluating their options. They might need a week to complete interviews with other families before making a decision. They might get an offer from another family and need to compare the positions thoughtfully rather than accepting the first offer.
Families who give ultimatums or demand immediate decisions when they make offers often lose excellent candidates who take that pressure as a red flag. Professional nannies who have options don’t want to work for families who show controlling or unreasonable behavior during the hiring process.
This timeline frustration goes both ways, by the way. You’re probably interviewing multiple candidates and taking time to evaluate them carefully. Nannies understand this and accept that you’re not making instant decisions. They expect you to extend the same courtesy – letting them make informed decisions rather than pressuring them because you need someone right now.
Sometimes you’ll love a candidate and they’ll accept another offer instead. That feels like wasted time, but it’s actually just how hiring works when you’re competing for quality candidates who have choices.
Your Specific Needs Make the Search Harder
Every requirement you add to your wish list significantly shrinks the available candidate pool. Want someone who speaks Mandarin fluently? You just eliminated 95% of nannies from consideration. Need someone willing to do extensive overnights and travel? Most career nannies prefer positions with consistent schedules. Require someone with newborn specialist training and five-plus years of experience? You’re looking for a much smaller pool than families who just need someone good with kids.
San Francisco families often have complex needs: someone bilingual, comfortable with high-net-worth discretion, willing to work with demanding schedules, experienced with specific parenting philosophies, able to manage multiple kids at different developmental stages. Each additional requirement makes finding the right person harder and lengthens the search.
This doesn’t mean you should compromise on genuinely important requirements. But it does mean you need realistic expectations about timeline. If you need someone highly specialized, the search will take longer than if you need someone for basic childcare.
Some families eventually realize mid-search that some requirements aren’t actually dealbreakers. Maybe you wanted someone with a college degree but you meet an amazing candidate with fifteen years of experience but no degree, and you realize the experience matters more. Being open to adjusting requirements as you learn what’s actually available helps, but figuring that out takes time and conversations with real candidates.
Good Nannies Need Reasonable Notice Periods
When you find your ideal candidate and she’s currently employed, she can’t start tomorrow. Professional nannies give notice to their current families – typically two to four weeks, sometimes longer if they’ve been with families for years or have contractual obligations.
Families who need someone to start immediately either need to hire someone who’s unemployed (which requires figuring out why they’re available so quickly) or pressure nannies to leave current positions without proper notice (which tells you they won’t give you proper notice either when they eventually move on).
The candidates who give appropriate notice to current employers are showing you they’re professional and considerate. They’re the same people who will give you proper notice when they eventually leave your family. Candidates who are willing to ghost current families or leave with minimal notice to grab your offer are showing you exactly how they’ll treat you eventually.
This notice period means that even after you find someone and they accept your offer, there’s often a three or four-week gap before they actually start. If you’re counting from when you began searching, you might be eight to ten weeks into the process before your new nanny walks in the door for her first day.
Families who can’t mentally handle this timeline either need to build in more buffer time before they actually need someone, or they need temporary coverage solutions while they search properly.
The Real Cost of Rushing the Process
Here’s what happens when families rush hiring because they’re desperate: they hire someone who seemed okay in a quick interview, skip reference checks or do them superficially, don’t do working interviews, and make an offer based on limited information because they need someone immediately.
Then one of a few things happens. Sometimes the nanny is genuinely terrible – unreliable, unprofessional, bad with the kids – and families end up firing them within weeks and starting the search over from scratch. Now they’ve lost six weeks between the rushed hire, the short employment period, and starting a new search. If they’d just taken the time to hire carefully the first time, they’d be done by now.
Sometimes the nanny is fine but not a good fit for their family specifically. She’s professional and competent but the chemistry isn’t there, or her approach doesn’t match their parenting style, or she’s not clicking with the kids. These placements often limp along for a few months with everyone kind of miserable before ending. Now families have lost three or four months and they’re back to searching.
Sometimes the rushed hire works out okay-ish. The nanny is decent enough that families don’t want to go through hiring again, but she’s not someone they’re thrilled with. These placements can last but they’re never the “we love our nanny, she’s like family” relationships that make the substantial cost of employing household staff feel worth it.
Very rarely do rushed hires turn into excellent long-term placements. It happens, but it’s lucky accident not reliable strategy.
What Actually Makes the Process Faster
You can’t control how long finding the right person takes, but you can control how efficiently you use the time you spend searching.
Be clear about requirements from the start. Write a detailed job description that covers responsibilities, schedule, compensation, requirements, and what your family culture is like. This filters out people who aren’t matches and attracts people who are. Vague job postings get lots of responses from inappropriate candidates, which wastes everyone’s time.
Respond quickly to strong candidates. When someone applies who looks promising, don’t wait three days to get back to them. Schedule the first interview within a day or two. Strong candidates often have multiple interested families, and being responsive shows you’re serious.
Make scheduling as easy as possible. Offer multiple time options for interviews. Be flexible about timing even if it’s slightly inconvenient. Do video first interviews if that helps with scheduling rather than insisting on in-person immediately.
Don’t ghost candidates who aren’t right. Send brief rejections so people know where they stand. This creates goodwill and professional reputation that matters in tight-knit nanny communities.
Have both partners involved and aligned from the start. Couples who have to repeatedly revisit decisions because partners aren’t on the same page about requirements waste enormous time. Get aligned about what you actually need, what you’re willing to pay, and what your dealbreakers are before you start interviewing.
Check references efficiently but thoroughly. Block out time to make all reference calls in one or two days rather than spreading them out over two weeks. Have your questions prepared. Take notes so you don’t have to call back for clarification.
Be ready to move quickly when you find the right person. Have your offer terms decided in advance. Be prepared to present an offer within a day or two of completing references if this is your person. Don’t let perfect candidates slip away because you needed another week to decide or you had to have three more family discussions about whether this was right.
Setting Realistic Expectations From the Start
If you’re reading this before you start searching, build in eight to twelve weeks minimum between when you start looking and when you absolutely must have someone in place. Have backup plans for that entire period – temporary care, family help, taking leave, whatever you need to do so you’re not desperate.
If you’re already searching and feeling panicked about timeline, take a breath and reassess. Can you extend your current arrangement? Can you find temporary coverage while you search properly? Can you adjust your work schedule temporarily? Making any of these work is almost certainly better than rushing into a bad hire.
The families we see succeed in finding excellent long-term nannies are the ones who accept from the beginning that this is a process that can’t be compressed beyond a certain point without compromising quality. They build adequate time into their planning, they focus on finding the right person rather than finding someone fast, and they trust that investing time up front saves them from the massive time sink of turnover and bad fits.
After twenty years of placements, we can tell you with certainty: the extra three or four weeks you spend finding the genuinely right person instead of settling for someone available now will pay off exponentially. You’ll have a nanny who stays for years, who your kids love, who makes your life genuinely better rather than creating new stress. That’s worth the wait, even when waiting feels impossible.
Take the time to hire right. Your future self will thank you.
