How to Interview a Nanny: What Families Should Actually Be Listening For

The questions you ask in a nanny interview matter less than what you are listening for when the answers come back.

Search for nanny interview questions, and you will find no shortage of lists, some of them dozens of questions long. Families print them, highlight them, and work through them top to bottom like a deposition. An hour later they have pages of notes and no clearer sense of whether they want this person in their home.

Listen.

We mean that literally. We have sat on both sides of this table since 2012. We interview every candidate we represent, and we help families get ready for their own interviews. (We have asked our share of questions that told us nothing. We are here to learn.)

Preparing a list, reading the résumé ahead of time, and taking notes is a reasonable way to start. It is also how you would hire an accountant, and a nanny interview has a different job to do. The families who choose well are trying to hear enough of the real person to trust their own read on whether this is someone they want with their children on the hard days.

What We Listen For (And None of It Is on the Résumé)

Experience, comfort with your children's ages, availability, and practical qualifications are the baseline. The interview is where you hear everything else.

How do they talk about the children they have cared for? A nanny who remembers particular moments, who lights up describing how a child grew, and who can tell you what made one household different from another is showing you how they engage with the work. A nanny who stays in generalities, or whose warmth sounds rehearsed, is showing you something too, even when nothing they say is wrong.
What happens when you ask about something hard? Every good interview includes some version of "tell me about a difficult situation with a previous family." The story matters less than where they put themselves in it. Listen for whether they own their part or whether the family and the child are always the problem, and for whether they learned from the hard experience or only survived it. A candidate who has never been wrong about anything is telling you plenty.
Is the childcare philosophy theirs, or is it vocabulary? A candidate who has thought about this work can connect their approach to real afternoons with real children. Ask the follow-up: "You mentioned child-led play. Can you walk me through what that looked like on a typical afternoon with your last family?" How specific the answer gets tells you more than the philosophy does.
Are they interviewing you back? A candidate who is weighing your family as seriously as you are weighing them will ask real questions. Their questions show you what they value and what experience has taught them to look for, or to avoid.

A Good Interviewee and a Good Nanny Are Different Things

Interviewing well is a skill, and so is caring for children well. They overlap less than families expect.

Some of the best nannies we know are nervous in a formal conversation and completely at ease on the floor with a toddler. Some polished interviewers have a smooth answer for everything and very little behind it. If you score the interview on poise, you will hire the best talker.

Should a candidate be able to hold a professional conversation? Yes. Should a shaky first ten minutes rule them out? It should not. Is a candidate who keeps a former family's private details private being vague? They are being discreet, and you will want that same discretion about your own household one day. Does the smooth answer count if you ask for an example and none comes? It counts for very little.

Discretion and vagueness can sound alike, so here is how we tell them apart. A discreet nanny will not tell you why the parents argued, and they can still tell you in detail what the four-year-old was like at bedtime.

The Questions That Surface What Matters

You do not need fifty questions. You need a few that are hard to answer with a script.

Scenario questions. Describe a real situation your family has faced, or will face, and ask what they would do. A hypothetical from a list gets a list answer. Your actual Tuesday, with the toddler who will not nap and the older child melting down over homework, gets you their judgment. Listen to how they reason through it and what they put first.

Transition and departure questions. How did your last position end? How did you feel about leaving? How did the children handle it? These questions cover the practical history and show you how the candidate thinks about attachment. A candidate who left well, who helped children through the goodbye with care, and who can talk about an ending honestly understands the weight of the role.

The "what do you need from us" question. What do you need from an employer to do your best work? A specific answer tells you about working style and communication, and it tells you the candidate knows themselves well enough to build a working relationship with you. A generic answer may mean they have not had the chance to figure that out yet.

What a Strong Candidate Sounds Like

They speak about previous children and families with warmth and specific detail.
They ask substantive questions about the role and your family.
They can describe a time they got something wrong and what they changed.
Their childcare philosophy comes with real examples attached.
They are honest about the kinds of families and roles that suit them and the kinds that do not.

What Should Give You Pause

Their answers about why previous positions ended are vague or change between tellings.
Previous families or children are always the difficult ones in their stories.
Their philosophy sounds right and never connects to an example.
They are reluctant to provide references or uncomfortable with a working trial.
They are enthusiastic about the job and cannot say anything specific about your children.

They Are Interviewing You, Too

A professional nanny with good options is deciding whether your home is a place they can do their best work. Families forget this, and it shows.

Tell the truth about the job. If a parent works from home, if the schedule shifts every week, or if your three-year-old is in a biting phase, say so in the interview. A candidate who accepts the real job stays longer than one who accepted the brochure version.

Keep your questions on the work. A candidate's age, religion, relationship status, health, and plans for a family of their own have no place in a nanny interview. Those questions are disrespectful, and depending on where you live they can create legal problems for you as an employer.

The Working Trial: Do Not Skip This

A paid working trial, typically one to seven days, is the most reliable way to assess a candidate beyond the interview. How someone works in your home, with your children, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon tells you things a formal conversation cannot.

We do mean paid. A trial is work, and professionals are paid for their work.

Families who skip the trial because the interview felt great occasionally get lucky. More often, they discover something in week three that a one-day trial would have shown them in hour four.

When you work with Adventure Nannies, we help you think through the questions that fit your family's situation before you sit down with a candidate, and we stay available during the trial so you have someone to think out loud with if anything comes up.

You are choosing the person who will be there for the scraped knees, the big feelings, and the long afternoons when you are not. The tiny humans at the center of this decision cannot interview anyone, so the listening falls to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What questions should I ask a nanny in an interview?

Adventure Nannies recommends a short set of questions that are hard to answer with a script: a real scenario from your household, how their last position ended and how the children handled it, and what they need from an employer to do their best work.

What are red flags in a nanny interview?

The patterns Adventure Nannies watches for are vague or shifting reasons for leaving past jobs, stories where the family or child is always the problem, a childcare philosophy with no examples behind it, and reluctance to provide references or do a working trial.

Should a nanny trial be paid?

Yes. A trial is work, and Adventure Nannies advises families to pay candidates for every trial day.

How long should a nanny trial be?

Adventure Nannies typically sees working trials run from one to seven days, long enough to watch a candidate with your children on an ordinary day.

Getting ready to interview nannies? Reach out at hello@adventurenannies.com.

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