There is often a bulletin board in many doctor’s offices that post nanny listings. Pre-schools are great places to ask around – parents and teachers are great references.

Bulletin boards at your local Starbucks, at the playground and at Gymboree type, or other commercially run pre-school settings as well as church or synagogues run pre-schools. Don’t forget to ask the other nannies at the playground if they have any friends who are looking for work.

Check these boards for ads advertising nannies looking for work – and post your own ad.

Your local daily newspaper will have ads under Domestic Employment Offered where nannies that want work place ads that you can read and answer. You can also place your own ad if you want under the section labeled Domestic Employment Wanted.

If you do decide to place an ad, first skim the ads that are already there – the ones that are being placed by employers as well as the ones being placed by nannies who want to be hired. Make sure that you have said exactly what you want in your ad, in terms of whether the job is full time, part time, which days of the week you need, if the job offered is a live in or live out, if driving is required, and if so, you may want to say ‘valid driver’s license required’ and ‘own car necessary’.  If you have an age preference, you legally can’t ask for someone under sixty because it’s age discrimination, but you can say, ‘prefer a mature nanny or prefer an energetic, youthful nanny.’ Legally, you are not allowed to discriminate by age, but there are certain words like “mature” or “energetic”-are code for what you need. If you want someone high school age for a few hours a day, then ask for a “mother’s helper type” nanny.

Salary is something you can put in your ad, or leave out. If you leave it out, you will get a lot of calls asking what the salary is. You will also get calls from people who are out of your salary range. If you do choose to leave out the salary you want to pay then you can ask what the person’s last salary was, and match it or raise it, depending on how many hours the last job was compared to this one. If you do put the salary you are offering in the paper, you may save time by not getting calls from people who won’t