12 Nanny Interview Questions Worth Asking

Quick version: decide what the job is before you write a single question. Then ask about her last two families, why those jobs ended, what a normal Tuesday looks like, what she does when a child hits her, and what she needs to be paid. Ask every candidate the same twelve questions so you can actually compare them, and book a paid trial day before you decide.

Most families I talk to have a list of nanny interview questions saved on their phone, and most of that list is not doing anything. Questions like what is your childcare philosophy get you a rehearsed paragraph from everybody, including the candidates who would not last a month.

These are the twelve I would ask, in the order I would ask them, and what I listen for in each answer. I have been on both sides of this interview for eighteen years.

Decide what the job is before you write the questions

Bad interviews usually go wrong before the interview. The family has not settled what the job actually is, so they ask general questions, get general answers, and end up choosing on gut feeling.

Write the job down first. Days, hours, the children's ages, driving or no driving, and whether you need one person or two. A part time nanny working three set days and a full-time nanny are different jobs that attract different candidates, and the questions are not the same for both.

Nights are their own category. If what you need is an overnight babysitter for the first few months with a newborn, you are hiring for a different skill set entirely, and you should be asking about infant sleep and feeding support rather than about preschool routines and park schedules.

What you need	The role you are hiring for	What changes in the interview
Weekday coverage while you work	Full-time nanny	Ask about long-term commitment and school-year logistics
Two or three set days	Part-time nanny	Ask about her other job and whether the schedules really fit
Nights with a newborn	Newborn care specialist or night nanny	Ask about infant sleep, feeding support and the morning handover
Occasional evenings	Babysitter	Ask about availability and bedtime in a house she does not know

Three questions about her experience

1. Tell me about the last two families you worked with. How old were the children, and how long were you there?
2. Why did each of those jobs end?
3. What ages are you actually best with, and what ages do you not enjoy?

The first one is a warm-up and a fact check at the same time. You want the dates, ages and lengths of stay to line up with what she wrote down. If a two-year job becomes about a year, maybe less, when she says it out loud, ask about the gap.

The second question matters more than it looks. Every nanny has had a job end. What you are listening for is whether she can describe it without every version being the family's fault.

The third gets an honest answer far more often than families expect. Most nannies have a range they are genuinely best at. Someone who tells you she loves toddlers and finds newborns hard is giving you real information, and that is a better answer than being wonderful with every age from birth to twelve.

Three questions about a normal day

1. Walk me through a normal Tuesday with a child my daughter's age, from the moment you arrive.
2. What would you do with them between lunch and nap on a rainy day?
3. How do meals work? What do you cook, and who decides what they eat?

These separate someone who has done the job from someone who has read about it. Ask for the specific day, not the philosophy behind it.

A nanny with real experience answers in order and in detail. Arrival, the handover from you, breakfast dishes, a walk before it gets hot, the park, lunch, nap, something quiet after. Someone who has not done it stays general and talks about being loving and patient without ever describing an actual hour.

Then watch the same thing happen on a paid trial day. Book four hours, pay her for them, and stay in the house but out of the room. Look for whether she gets down at your child's level and follows what your child is already doing instead of directing it. You will learn more in those four hours than in the interview.

Three questions about the hard moments

1. What do you do when a three-year-old hits you?
2. Tell me about a time you disagreed with a parent. What happened?
3. What would you do if my child fell and there was a cut on her forehead?

Discipline is where families and nannies most often turn out to disagree, and it is much better to find that out now than in month four.

On the first one, listen for whether she has a method. Getting down to eye level, naming what happened, moving the child away from the situation, coming back to it once everyone is calm. Any consistent method can be worked with. What you do not want is an answer that changes depending on the day.

On the second, you are checking whether she will raise things with you directly. A nanny who has never once disagreed with a parent in ten years either has not been paying attention or will not tell you when she does.

On the emergency question you want calm sequencing. Stop the bleeding, look at the child, call you, go to urgent care if it needs stitches. Ask what first aid and CPR training she has, when she last renewed it, and ask to see the card. Someone who has kept it current will have it on her phone.

Three questions about the working relationship

1. What are you looking for in a family? What has made a job good for you before?
2. What rate do you need, and what does the rest of your week look like?
3. What would make you leave a job?

You are being interviewed too. The nannies you actually want have options, and question ten is where you find out whether your household is one they would choose.

Question eleven is the one families dance around, and I push them to ask it early and in real numbers. In this area a full-time nanny is generally somewhere in the high twenties to the mid thirties per hour depending on experience, the number of children and the duties. If your number is below hers, you both find out in ten minutes instead of after a second interview and a trial day.

Cover guaranteed hours, overtime and paid time off in that same conversation. They change what a rate is worth, and a nanny who has worked for a well-run family will usually raise them herself.

Question twelve tends to get a real answer at the end of an interview that has gone well. Most nannies will name the thing that went wrong for them before: hours creeping, duties creeping, or a rate that never moved in three years.

What gets checked before you ever sit down

When a family meets a candidate through us, a lot of this groundwork is already done. Every candidate goes through our seven-step vetting process before they are put in front of a family, and we stay involved after the placement starts rather than disappearing at the handover.

That does not replace your interview. It means your interview can be about fit. You get to spend the hour on how she would run your particular days, instead of on working out whether she has really done this work before.

It also shortens the search, and the commute is a bigger part of that than families realise. Searching woodbridge nannies and searching babysitting washington dc returns different candidate pools with completely different drives, and matching on that first is what stops a good candidate turning the job down after the second interview.

Next step

Print the twelve questions, leave room to write under each one, and run the same list with every candidate so you can compare them side by side afterwards. Then book the paid trial day before you decide anything.

If you would rather start from a short list than from a stack of applications, tell us what the job is and we will send candidates who match it. Call 202-415-7033 or use the contact form on our site with your days, your hours and your children's ages.