Personality tests can help parents learn more and choose better.
Selecting a caregiver for our children is a difficult task and the risks in making a wrong choice are frightening. Most articles on this topic advise parents to interview the nannies, check their references and perform a background check. While each of those screening tools is important, they all have their limitations and do not necessarily provide sufficient information to make the best possible choice.
The purpose of an interview is to obtain enough knowledge about the candidate to determine whether he or she is suitable for the job. Yet, interviews often fail to reveal important facts or problematic personality traits, and their predictive value is limited, even when conducted by several properly trained interviewers.
Reference checks are an important component of the screening process, since past performance is usually a good indicator of future performance. Nevertheless, such references are highly subjective and in some cases past employers may even prefer, for various reasons, to omit certain details which may harm the candidate in his search for a new position.
Background checks are often used to verify facts about the candidate. Such checks may include identity verification, criminal records search, credit checks, past employment and education verification, driving abstracts and more. It is important to bear in mind that accuracy of the various databases searched may be limited for various reasons. More than that, having, for example, a clean criminal record means a person has never been convicted of such activity but does not necessarily indicate that a person has never been involved in criminal activity or has a tendency to do so.
Performing nanny personality assessments can significantly improve the selection process and minimize the risk of a wrong choice. Personality assessments are psychological tests that analyze a person