Hiring
How to find and hire a nanny in Sydney
Finding a nanny is a hiring decision, not a booking. Where to look in Sydney, what to check, and what to put in writing before the first day.
Booking a babysitter takes a message. Hiring a nanny takes a fortnight, because you are filling a role in your household rather than covering an evening. Almost all of the work is before the first day, and the families who find it easy are the ones who did that part properly.
Settle the shape before you write the ad
Most stalled nanny searches are not a shortage of nannies. They are a family that has not decided what it wants, advertising for it anyway, and then finding that nobody they meet quite fits.
Answer these first
- Which days, and what times on each. A 3pm to 6.30pm afternoon role and a 7.30am to 5pm full day attract different people
- What is in the job beyond the children: kids' meals, their laundry, tidying up after the day, the school run, activities
- Driving. Whose car, and whether you expect them to use their own
- School holidays. Same hours, more hours, or none, and whether they are paid
- How much notice either of you gives to change or cancel a day
- The rate you can actually afford once super, tax and leave sit on top of it
That last one is where budgets break. A nanny working regular hours in your home is almost always your employee, so the hourly rate is not the cost of the arrangement. What a nanny costs sets out the on-costs and what Sydney nannies are asking. Read it before you name a number anywhere.
Live-in nannies
A live-in nanny is a nanny with a room in your house. Living in changes where they sleep and nothing about what they are: an employee under the Miscellaneous Award, paid for the hours they work rather than given an allowance for being around. The award floor, current from 1 July 2026, and the tax, super and insurance that sit on top of it, are the same as for any nanny and are set out in the rates guide. Ordinary hours are 38 a week, and hours past that are overtime.
It is legal, and it is ordinary employment. The Check, the duty to verify it and workers insurance apply exactly as they do to a nanny who goes home at night, because what makes someone a nanny is the standing role, not the room.
Profiles say whether someone wants casual or ongoing work, not whether they would live in, so ask in the first message whether it is on the table. An au pair is a live-in arrangement with rules of its own, and this guide is about nannies.
Where to find a nanny in Sydney
Once the shape is settled, four places are worth trying, in this order, because the cheap ones are also the fast ones.
Four places, in the order to try them
- Profiles, closest to you first: what someone asks and how far they travel is written down rather than guessed
- An ad, so that nannies whose travel radius reaches your suburb see the job without you finding them one by one
- Word of mouth at the school gate and in local parents' groups, which turns up a nanny finishing with another family
- An agency, which does the finding and some of the checking for a placement fee or an ongoing margin
Start with the profiles: nannies in Sydney lists the people near you who want regular ongoing work, and find a nanny near you goes suburb by suburb. Browsing and messaging are free. Word of mouth runs alongside the first two rather than after them, because it turns up one well-vouched-for candidate a month rather than a shortlist this week, and an agency changes nothing else in this guide: you are still the employer, and the Check is still yours to sight.
What to put in the ad
There is no box on a job ad that marks it as a nanny role rather than a babysitting one, so the words have to do it. They are read in public, too: an open ad appears on babysitting and nanny jobs in Sydney under your first name, your last initial and your suburb.
What the words have to carry
- The days, and the times on each, spelled out rather than "flexible", which reads as undecided
- That the role is ongoing, with a start date and roughly how long if you know it
- Your children's ages, and anything about their week that shapes the job
- What the job includes beyond supervision
- What you genuinely need on day one: a licence, a Check, experience with a particular age
Then name a rate, or a range. An ad without one saves you nothing and costs you the same conversation three times over.
Check the Check, then have the conversation
A nanny is doing child-related work as NSW defines it, so the duty to verify their Working With Children Check lands on you rather than on an employer or an agency, and nobody sends you a reminder. The babysitter vs nanny guide explains where that line sits, and how to check a WWCC is the step by step. It is free and takes about two minutes.
Do it early. Checking before you meet someone stops you explaining a bad result away after you have already decided you like them.
Once someone is past that, the interview is the same conversation you would have with a babysitter, asked harder: the questions and what a good answer sounds like are in questions to ask a babysitter. For an ongoing role, push hardest on two of them. How they handle a day that goes wrong, and why the last ongoing role ended.
Pay for a trial shift
Meet first, briefly, without the children. Then run a real shift with them, at the real time of day, with you out of the house for at least part of it.
An hour of watching someone with your children tells you more than an hour of asking them about children. You are looking at how they are when nobody is performing: whether they get down to the child's level, whether they ask you or guess, and what the house looks like at the end.
Ring two referees who employed them in an ongoing care role, not character references. The question worth asking a former employer is whether they would have them back.
Put it in writing before the first day
Nothing drafted by a lawyer. One document you both have a copy of, agreed before the start date rather than renegotiated in month three.
What the document covers
- The gross hourly rate, and when they are paid
- The days and hours, and whether they are guaranteed
- Notice, both directions, for changing a day and for ending the arrangement
- What happens when you cancel a shift at short notice, and when they are sick
- Leave: how it accrues, how it is requested, and what happens over Christmas
- Driving, whose car, and who carries the insurance
- A date a few months out to sit down and review it
The review date is the item people skip and the one that earns its place. Nanny arrangements drift: an extra afternoon here, the shopping added there, a rate that has not moved in two years while the job has. A date in the calendar turns that into a conversation instead of a resignation.
What we do, and what is yours
Sitters here say which kind of work they want, casual babysitting or regular ongoing work, and plenty say both, which is what puts someone in front of you when you are looking for ongoing care. They can also opt in to verification, which is a government ID checked against a matching selfie and a WWCC status checked with the Office of the Children's Guardian; those profiles carry a badge with the month we checked. Everything after that is yours. We do not screen for competence, we do not place anyone, we never touch the money and we take no cut of what you agree, and the trial, the referees and the decision are the parts that decide how this goes.
