Nanny Agency JobsAn informational interview can help you understand a kind of nanny work before deciding whether to pursue it. Choose a practitioner with relevant experience, ask permission for a bounded conversation and prepare questions about the work itself. Your immediate goal is better information for a career decision.
This guide offers an original invitation, conversation route and reflection exercise. They are drafts for you to adapt, not messages sent on your behalf. One person's experience can reveal useful questions without representing an entire occupation, agency or household market.
Give the conversation one research purpose
Start with a decision you are considering. You might be deciding whether to investigate travel roles, explore agency work or remain in a familiar childcare setting. Write what you need to understand before taking the next step.
CareerOneStop describes an informational interview as learning from someone's experience in a field or organization, rather than seeking a job offer in that meeting. CareerOneStop: Informational interviews.
Make your purpose narrower than “learn about being a nanny.” For example: “I want to understand how two experienced nannies organize the non-childcare parts of travel assignments.” That question points you toward relevant experience and gives the person a reasonable way to judge whether they can help.
Read any public professional information the person has chosen to share before approaching them. Do not infer permission to contact their employer, references or family clients. If a mutual contact suggests an introduction, confirm what they are comfortable passing along instead of treating a name as an endorsement.
Write an invitation with an easy boundary
Keep the request short enough that the recipient can see the topic and commitment immediately. An original invitation might read:
“I am researching whether travel nanny work would fit my next career step. Your public description of working across different locations interested me. Would you be willing to have a brief conversation about how you prepare the work, without discussing private family details? I can work around a time and format that suit you. I understand if you are unavailable.”
Adapt the invitation to facts you can verify. Do not invent a mutual connection, imply that a recruiter sent you or describe the person's work more broadly than their public information supports. Suggest a limited duration if useful, but let the recipient confirm what they can offer.
If the person agrees, send the central question and a small number of themes. Confirm the time zone and how you will connect. Ask before recording; a meeting agreement alone is not recording permission. Ordinary private notes may be sufficient for your research.
Follow a conversation route, not a questionnaire
Use this original four-part route to keep the meeting useful:
- Context: ask which type of assignment the person is describing and what part they personally handled.
- Work: explore one recurring task, including its preparation and dependencies.
- Variation: ask what might be different in another household or role.
- Research gap: identify what you should verify elsewhere before deciding.
Choose one example to explore in depth. “Could you walk me through how a packing request becomes a confirmed work assignment?” invites detail about responsibility. “Is travel nanny work great?” is likely to produce an opinion too broad for your decision.
Listen for limits as carefully as advantages. If the person says a particular arrangement worked well, ask what made it workable: their own preferences, a clearly defined brief or support supplied by others. Avoid pressing for private client stories. Redirect a revealing example toward the work process rather than collecting identifying details.
Compare two fictional accounts carefully
Fictional example: Mara is researching travel work. One practitioner says a defined preparation period made the assignment manageable. Another says the hardest part was receiving itinerary changes without knowing which decisions the nanny could make.
Mara writes three separate notes. First, these are two individuals' accounts. Second, both accounts raise questions about preparation and decision authority. Third, neither establishes the usual conditions in all travel jobs.
Mara's next research action is to examine actual briefs for those details. Mara does not average the stories into a claim about the industry or decide that one practitioner must be wrong. Different arrangements could produce different experiences.
This comparison also reveals a question Mara had not considered: who owns changes outside the nanny's scheduled work? That becomes a topic to ask about when evaluating a specific role. The informational conversations have improved the research without substituting for an employer's explanation of the actual opening.
Close the meeting and choose one next action
As the agreed end approaches, summarize one useful insight and check that you understood it. If more questions remain, ask whether another conversation would be welcome; do not assume the first meeting creates an ongoing mentorship.
Send a brief acknowledgment through the agreed channel. Keep any promise you made to share a public resource or clarify a question. If the person suggests another contact, ask what introduction or use of their name is appropriate before proceeding.
Finally, label your notes observation, interpretation and unverified question. Choose one next action that resolves a question: review a brief, compare a training requirement or seek another perspective. A useful informational interview leaves you better prepared to investigate, even when it changes your mind about the direction you first imagined.
Sources
CareerOneStop: Informational interviews, accessed October 27, 2026. Used for the purpose of an informational interview. The invitation, research route and fictional comparison are original NAJ editorial tools.