Finding a local nanny

Hubs and I, we are strong believers of outsourcing. Not that we are bad parents, we dote on our kids, but we believe that there are things that we need to be personally involved in (i.e. value added stuff like reading to them, communicating with them, giving them lots of hugs and kisses, etc.) and others which can be outsourced (i.e. mundane non-value adding chores like feeding and washing, etc.). So to cut the long story short, our nanny has just informed us that she is resigning so once again we are on the look out for a new nanny for the kids.

I remembered how we panicked when our previous nanny (whom we got through a friend's recommendation) resigned. This time we know the drill. Our friends are usually curious (slanting towards disbelief) when we tell them we have a live-in local nanny. We usually get asked "really? how did you find one? is it difficult? etc etc..."

So for those of you wanting to get a local nanny, here's what you do:

1. Place an ad in the local chinese dailies. I was told "Zhong Guo Bao" (which we tried previously) but found that the quality of applicants are better in "Xing Zhou" and "Guang Ming" (both these papers are related, so you get a 2-in-1 package deal). Just call the papers, tell them your requirements and they will do the ad write up for you.
2. Be prepared to be bombarded with calls. OK that's a slight exaggeration but you can expect at least 3-4 calls a days or more which isn't at all bad. I would normally run the ad for 6 consecutive days so you do the math (i got 34 calls the last time). So better get organised else by the end of the week you'll be utterly confused.
3. Make appointment to meet the shortlisted candidates. This is quite tricky - i must admit i've not really mastered the phone screening process (most of the time i ended up listening to them talk rather than the other way round, and mind you some can be really long winded). On one hand you'd want to have face to face meetings with everyone who sounded decent over the phone, on the other hand you just won't have the time. For us, we can only have the meetings on weekends, and normally you'd need to find your way to parts of KL you never knew existed (thank god for GPS) - very time consuming indeed. Note to myself: have a script ready with a checklist of questions to ask and do a proper first round screening over the phone. 

Now wish me luck in my nanny search :-)