My husband and I recently hired a nanny for our four-month-old son. It was a lengthy process. We started searching about a year ago, while I was still pregnant, because I wasn’t sure how long of a maternity leave I would take. Our child-care situation was and still is unusual. We are currently sharing a nanny with our dear neighbors, whose son is the same age as ours, so we needed a nanny who was comfortable watching two infants and working for two families.

To find our caregiver, I decided to go the word-of-mouth route. I wrote tons of emails asking for nanny leads to virtually everyone with young kids that I knew here in Miami, FL, as well as to those I considered to be “social connectors” who might be able to steer me to good hires. The method worked well: we found leads to an abundance of great nannies, including some that friends had outgrown. Ultimately, we ended up hiring the amazing former babysitter of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend...

Some of my friends have found sitters using nanny-placement services that vet hires for a ridiculous fee. But these services have received mixed reviews: one friend, for instance, who used a pricey service ended up firing her nanny because the caregiver repeatedly lied about where she was taking the infant during the day. Other friends have had success using CraigsList.org, although sorting through the listings and checking out references can be very labor intensive. (Even this particularly unorthodox CraigsList.org ad profiled in a New York Times article yesterday attracted over a dozen serious responses). Many of the nannies found through CraigsList.org, or through friends, are also undocumented immigrants.

How did you find your caregivers? Any tips?