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Copy Ready Au Pair Interview Questions for South African Parents

This guide gives you grouped, ready-to-use au pair interview questions and a short hiring checklist you can copy straight into a call or form. Before you offer anyone a role, run three checks: contactable references, a police clearance certificate, and a National Child Protection Register Part B inquiry. If you would rather start from a pool of reviewed candidates, we can help with that too.

TL;DR:

  • Contactable references should confirm past reliability, specific duties, and no employment gaps or conflicting dates between CV and referees.
  • Verify legal permission with a police clearance certificate and a CPR Part B inquiry, as informal assurances are not sufficient to ensure suitability.
  • Conduct at least two to three conversations, including a supervised trial shift, to accurately assess the candidate’s real childcare skills and behavior.
  • Ask for concrete past examples in interviews, especially for handling emergencies or challenging situations, rather than relying on hypothetical answers.
  • Check visa or permit status immediately, ensuring legal authorization for work and requesting documentation if actively considering hiring a candidate.
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Table of Contents

What to screen before the interview even starts

A quick screen saves you hours of interviews with the wrong candidates. Before you book a call, ask for identity documents, a police clearance certificate, and two contactable references who are not family members. Confirm whether the candidate has had a Form 29 or Form 30 CPR check done, or ask whether they will consent to you making that inquiry yourself.

A short message exchange or a voice note tells you a surprising amount: how quickly someone replies, whether their written English is clear, and whether they show up on time for a scheduled call. Watch for warning signs that justify ending the process early:

  • Evasiveness or delay when asked for identity documents or a clearance certificate
  • Dates on a CV that do not match what the candidate describes verbally
  • No referees offered, or referees who turn out to be relatives
  • Reluctance to confirm basic availability or location

Our family safety guide walks through a fuller screening checklist and templates you can reuse for every candidate.

Ready-to-use interview questions grouped by purpose

Once a candidate clears the initial screen, a structured interview tells you far more than a casual chat. Group your questions by purpose so you cover competence, safety, routines, personality and logistics without missing anything important.

Childcare competence

  1. Tell me about a specific day you spent caring for a child around my child’s age, start to finish.
  2. What ages have you cared for, and for how long each time?
  3. Describe a time a child in your care got hurt or upset. What did you actually do?
  4. What does a typical weekday look like when you are responsible for young children?

Safety and emergencies

  1. Have you completed first-aid or CPR training, and when did you last renew it?
  2. If a child choked on food in front of you, what would you do first?
  3. How would you handle a child with a sudden high fever at night?
  4. What is your process for finding and calling emergency contacts in an unfamiliar home?

Routines and discipline

  1. How do you handle bedtime when a child refuses to settle?
  2. What is your view on screen time, and how have you enforced limits before?
  3. Tell me about a child who had a tantrum in a difficult place. What worked?
  4. How do you approach potty training, and what has gone wrong before?

Personality and cultural fit

  1. What do you expect in terms of free time and days off?
  2. How do you feel about following house rules that differ from your own habits at home?
  3. Tell me about a time you had to adjust to a family’s customs or routines that felt unfamiliar.

Logistics

  1. Do you hold a valid driving licence, and how much driving have you done with children in the car?
  2. Would you be comfortable doing school runs on a fixed schedule?
  3. Are you comfortable using a family car under agreed conditions?
  4. What is your current visa or permit status, and does it allow this kind of work?

Pro Tip: Ask every candidate the exact same core questions in the same order. It makes comparing answers across interviews far easier than relying on memory alone.

Scenario questions that reveal real behaviour

Hypothetical questions invite rehearsed answers. Scenario and behavioural questions ask for a specific memory, which is much harder to fake. Keep each scenario short and ask the candidate to narrate exactly what they did last time something similar happened, not what they would do in theory.

  • “A child in your care starts choking on food. Walk me through exactly what you did the last time this happened.”
  • “You’re at the shops and your child has a full tantrum in front of strangers. What did you do last time?”
  • “You briefly lose sight of a child on an outing. What’s the first thing you do?”
  • “A parent is running very late to collect their child. How have you handled that before?”

Listen for calm, specific steps rather than vague reassurance, and note whether the candidate mentions checking in with you or communicating proactively once the situation was resolved.

How to run the interview and what to check afterwards

A single conversation rarely tells you enough. Go Overseas recommends two to three conversations, mixing audio and video, followed by a supervised trial shift to see how a candidate actually performs rather than how they describe themselves.

  1. Screening call. A short phone or voice-note exchange to confirm basics and rule out obvious mismatches.
  2. Structured video interview. Work through the grouped questions above and note specific examples, not just general impressions.
  3. Supervised trial day. Observe the candidate with your children in person before committing to a longer placement.

When you call referees, ask for exact dates of employment, the specific duties involved, whether the candidate was reliable with time-keeping, and whether any safeguarding concerns arose. NEDSA notes that the interview works both ways: candidates who never ask questions about the children or household routine often signal low long-term commitment.

A police clearance certificate and a CPR Part B inquiry through Form 29 are not optional extras. An entry on the register can legally bar someone from child-facing work, so informal assurances are never a substitute for the formal check.

Red flags at this stage include referees who cannot be reached, employment gaps nobody can explain, and conflicting dates between the CV and what referees describe.

Setting up a trial period and onboarding properly

Au pair guiding child during trial shift

A written trial period protects everyone. Set out the dates, specific duties, pay, and the exact outcomes that would end the trial early, such as unreliable time-keeping or a safety concern you observed directly.

Once you decide to go ahead, a short onboarding checklist keeps the first week smooth:

  • Share emergency numbers, your address, and nearby medical facilities
  • List allergies, medications and any health conditions clearly in writing
  • Write out the daily routine: wake times, meals, naps and bedtime
  • Set house rules, screen-time limits and expectations around whereabouts

Simple written clauses on notice periods for time off, how days off are scheduled, and payment cadence prevent most disputes before they start.

What local placements have taught us

The biggest mistake we see is hiring on charm alone. A warm, confident candidate in an interview is not the same as a reliable one in practice, and skipping referee calls or trial shifts is the fastest route to a mismatch.

What consistently works: asking for concrete past examples rather than hypotheticals, staging the process across two or three conversations, and setting boundaries on pay, hours and house rules before the first day rather than after a problem appears.

Questions that reveal language and communication skills

Strong communication matters as much as childcare experience, because an au pair needs to understand instructions, explain problems clearly, and reassure a child in an unfamiliar language. During the interview, ask the candidate to describe their daily routine in detail rather than giving yes or no answers, since longer answers reveal vocabulary and fluency far better than short replies.

Try questions like: “Can you describe, in detail, how you’d explain a house rule to a child who doesn’t want to follow it?” or “Tell me about a time you had to explain something important to a parent you hadn’t met before.” Listen for clarity, pace and whether the candidate asks for clarification when unsure, which is often a stronger signal than vocabulary alone.

A short written task, such as a message describing how their week went, can confirm written English skills if the role involves daily updates or logging a child’s meals and naps. Pay attention to whether explanations stay calm and organised under a bit of pressure, since that mirrors how the candidate will communicate during an actual emergency.

How to discuss expectations and responsibilities clearly

Many placements break down not because of a skills gap but because expectations were never spelled out. Use the interview itself to walk through responsibilities in plain terms: exact hours, specific duties (meals, school runs, light housework related to the children), and how flexible or fixed the schedule is.

Ask the candidate to repeat back what they understood the role to involve. A mismatch here, such as assuming the role includes general housekeeping when it does not, is far easier to correct before an offer than after someone has moved in.

Two-way au pair expectations checklist

Cover pay, days off, notice periods and what happens around public holidays while you are both still in the interview stage. Clear, specific language now prevents the vague resentment that builds when either side assumes something the other never agreed to.

Legal and visa considerations to raise during the interview

If a candidate is not a South African citizen, ask directly about their current visa or permit status and whether it permits this type of work. This is not a question to leave for later: hiring someone without the right permission creates risk for both the family and the candidate.

Ask when the permit expires and whether renewal is already in progress, since a role that starts well can still end abruptly if paperwork lapses. It is reasonable to ask for a copy of the relevant documentation once you are seriously considering an offer, alongside the police clearance certificate and CPR Part B result discussed earlier.

Where legal detail falls outside your own expertise, a labour consultant or immigration practitioner is the right person to confirm compliance rather than relying on informal advice from other parents.

Our honest take on what actually predicts a good match

Most advice on this topic focuses heavily on finding the “right personality,” but personality is the easiest thing to fake for an hour and the hardest thing to verify. What the evidence from staged interviews and trial shifts actually supports is this: specific past behaviour, checked against real referees, predicts reliability far better than how someone comes across on a single call.

The conventional approach of one long interview and a gut decision skips the two steps that matter most, reference checks and a supervised trial, because they take more effort. If you only have time to do one thing properly, make it the formal checks: a contactable referee, a police clearance certificate, and a CPR Part B inquiry. Everything else, including the questions in this guide, works best once you already know the candidate is who they say they are.

— Nicole

Ready to browse reviewed au pair profiles?

Running every check in this guide is far easier when you start from candidates who have already been reviewed. It is possible to browse local au pair profiles by region, message candidates directly, and filter by availability and experience without paying agency fees.

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  • Browse profiles filtered by city or province, including au pairs in Gauteng
  • Message candidates directly once you’ve chosen a plan
  • Still run your own reference, police clearance and CPR checks before hiring, even through a reviewed marketplace

Our pricing page shows current plans, or see how AuPairly works if you want the full picture before you start searching.

FAQ

What are the typical responsibilities of an au pair?

An au pair typically handles child-focused duties such as meals, school runs, homework support, bath and bedtime routines, and light activities, rather than general housekeeping. Exact duties vary by household, so it is worth confirming the specific list during the interview itself.

What are 7 interview questions I should definitely ask?

A strong core set covers a specific past childcare example, first-aid training, how they’d handle a choking emergency, their approach to bedtime and discipline, expectations around free time, driving experience, and current visa or permit status. These seven span competence, safety, routines, fit and logistics in one short list.

How should an au pair answer questions about their own family?

A candidate should be able to briefly describe their family background and what drew them to childcare without it turning into the main focus of the answer. Strong answers connect their own upbringing to specific qualities, such as patience or responsibility, rather than simply reciting facts.

What are the hardest interview questions to prepare for?

The hardest questions tend to ask for a specific past example rather than a general opinion, such as describing exactly what happened the last time a child was injured in their care. These questions are hard to fake, which is exactly why they are worth asking.

Sources

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