Nov 16 2015 4 Important Steps to Hiring Child Care Workers and Running Background Checks
Trust is crucial with childcare workers.
Child care is an increasingly crucial aspect of the workplace, as families change and expand in the twenty-first century. But hiring effective, safe child care remains tough to do effectively. Here’s how to get the right people to staff your child care center.
Set A High Bar
Ask any parent; everyone is convinced they can take care of children. And more often than not, this confidence is, at best, unwarranted, something no business wants to discover the hard way. So set some qualifications that any child care workers at your company will need to meet to limit unqualified resumes. A good place to start is your state’s standards for licensing child care facilities; look at what training workers need and what certifications they need to hold. This will also ensure you get experienced staff, often crucial in child care.
Make sure you’re specific in the job posting, as well. Again, many people think they can get the job because they’re an “awesome parent,” so make it clear you’re looking for more than somebody who can handle a baby.
Get Referrals From Current Staff
Start with the employees you have. Approach the parents on your staff and any child care workers you’ve already hired at your company and ask them for any referrals they may have. They’ll usually offer a few names that you can then check out and, if you decide they’re right for your company, ask if they’re interested in coming aboard. Make clear what qualifications you’re looking for, however; great workers may still not have the skills you need.
Ask Hard, Specific Questions When Interviewing
There’s nobody your employees need to trust more at your company than the child care workers you hire, so don’t hesitate to ask hard questions of your applicants at the interview. Your interview process should be as rigorous as any other employee, and you should also ask specific questions about discipline, learning, and potential emergencies. Come up with a few scenarios that the workers might face and ask them how they’d deal with them specifically. And don’t hesitate to involve the parents; at the very least, parents in your company should meet with applicants and see if they’re a good fit.
Run Thorough Background Checks
Happy employees often need childcare.
One of the struggles any parent faces is who to trust with their children, and most parents take an attitude of “trust, but verify.” You should do the same: Collect references from your applicants and check them as thoroughly as possible, and consider getting personal references as well. Run a background check on your applicants, making it clear that you’ll do so, and look for anything that your employees might object to. Run a credit check and ensure any child care workers you hire are financially stable and will be there when you need them.
How rigorously you hire from these checks is up to you, but conducting them will both ensure you get the best employees and also ensure that if the worst happens, you did everything you could to prevent it.
Parents need to trust the people working with their children. With rigorous checks and careful hiring, your employees will have the workers they need to care for their children … and in turn give you their best work.
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