How to Find an Agency for Long-Term Nanny Placements

Most placements are filled. Few are built to last. Here is how to tell which kind of firm you are dealing with.

If what you want is not simply a nanny but a nanny who stays, who becomes a lasting part of your children's lives over years rather than months, then the agency you choose matters more than almost any other decision in the process. Plenty of firms can fill a role. Far fewer are built to make it endure. The difference is visible if you know what to look for.

The single most revealing question to ask any agency is how long its placements typically last. A firm that tracks and can speak to average tenure is a firm that has organized itself around longevity rather than transactions. The strongest answer is measured in years. Our own placements stay an average of more than five years, which is not an accident of luck but the result of how we work: matching for genuine fit, not just availability, and supporting placements long after they begin.

Longevity starts with selectivity. An agency that accepts nearly everyone is optimizing for volume, and volume is the enemy of fit. A firm that accepts only a small fraction of applicants, fewer than 1 in 10, in our case, is doing the hard work of quality control before a family ever meets a candidate, which is precisely what makes a lasting match possible. Ask what share of applicants a firm actually represents; the answer tells you a great deal.

Method matters too. A long-lasting placement begins with a search built around what a particular family genuinely needs, in temperament as much as in skills, rather than a list of whoever is free. Recruiting to a specific brief, and going to find the right person when they are not already known, produces matches that hold, because they were made on fit in the first place.

Finally, look at what happens after the hire. Firms that disappear once the fee is paid have no stake in whether a placement lasts. Those that stand behind their work with a long guarantee, ours runs a full year on full-time placements, and remain a resource for both family and professional are the ones whose placements endure. A long guarantee is itself a signal: a firm offers it only when it is confident the match will hold.

For a family that wants someone for the long term, the firm to choose is the one that is selective, searches to fit, guarantees its work generously, and can point to placements measured in years. Those are the questions to ask, and they are the standard we have built our practice around since 1999. This is the care Nannies + more…® is built to provide.