How To Become An Au Pair

When I was around 18 I heard of au pairs. One of my friends from high school became an au pair in Australia, and soon many other friends of mine were becoming au pairs all over the world. 

I knew I wanted to travel, and since I loved kids I decided to take the plunge and become an au pair myself!

Are you interested in becoming an au pair? If so I would definitely recommend it because it was one of the best experiences of my life so far.

I have younger siblings, and had been babysitting both my younger sister and just working as a babysitter in general for many years, mostly throughout my teens.

I also volunteered at the local library in high school to do my community service hours (I’m from Ontario, Canada and in high school we were required to do so many hours of community service to graduate). I tutored children in reading and ran the arts and crafts workshops for children as my hours.

I found a company called Scotia Personnel https://www.scotia-personnel-ltd.com/ – here is their website. It’s for Canadians, but there are many other companies in other countries just like them. Are you Canadian? If not, you can go to their website and send them a message, and they can help link you through to a company for your country. I also have a whole post dedicated to finding the best au pair company for you!

I looked through their au pair programs and requirements for each country and eventually settled on Australia, since I already had two friends do that same program previously and I knew they both loved it. I had wanted to become an au pair in New Zealand, but the taxes I would have had to pay were more than I wanted to give up! Everywhere sounded so amazing though!

There was an interview process. I spoke to a woman with the company several times about the different programs about what would work for me, what I was looking for, how long I was interested in going, and what I was wanting from a host family.

After a few of these phone calls and deciding I was interested in going through this company, I had a Skype interview with the owner Marilyn, who interviews everyone. The interview was about 40 minutes and we just talked about my experience and previous over seas travels (I had none for overseas, but it was okay).

She approved me, so we then filled out sort of a questionnaire for host families to read.

My profile was then sent to the Australian sister agency where host families can read your profiles and send you theirs if they think they would be a good match. Once I received the families profiles I would read them, reply whether or not I was interested in an interview, and then we would set up a Skype interview.

I loved reading family profiles and seeing what each family was like and what they were looking for in an au pair.

I had a few interviews before matching with the family I ended up with.

Then Scotia personnel helped me with travel insurance and getting my visa, and I regularly would have Skype calls with my host family before arriving.

One thing I do want to say though is to make sure you speak with the family about everything before going. I thought I had, but when I arrived my host family were not at all who they seemed to be on paper, and the job wasn’t as expected.

I still had an amazing time and would do it all over again, because the bond I made with the kids was priceless, and I made tons of friends and had lots of travel time, but I left earlier than expected because of the actual job duties, lots of them I didn’t agree to before going, and then suddenly new duties were expected of me once there.

I hope this helps and if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to email me!