A 1,000-word job advertisement for a nanny sent the internet into overdrive last week because of its extremely detailed list of requirements. The advert, which was taken from a confidential job board, was by a single mum and CEO who has since defended it saying that most mums likely have every requirement she listed.
Posted online to The Calendar Group last week, the job advertisement begins sounding pretty normal. ‘Household Manager/Cook/Nanny needed for single mom entrepreneur CEO family in Menlo Park, CA with girl-boy twin 10-year olds,’ it reads. ‘Looking for a long-term (at least five years) member of the household to act with leadership, strategy, attention to detail, high energy, and kindness. Live-in or out. Car provided.’
Requesting a nanny who can work with the assistance of a ‘housekeeper, au pair, property manager and gardener/handyman’, the advert seems like a simple peak into the world of the super-rich. Until it descends into unbelievable detail. Under ‘requirements’, the CEO lists a total of 45 requests, some necessities and some just ‘preferred’.
Ranging from intermediate skier and ‘can do calisthenics with kids (sit ups, lunges, squats, pushups)' to ‘can correctly quantify how much fish to purchase for five people’, the advert reads more like a handbook to the family's life than a classification.
‘Strategically think through vacation options based on the developmental levels of the kids and the need for the mom to relax,’ one requirement states. ‘Conduct research into domestic and global vacation options based on criteria, populate information into a simple Excel spreadsheet, recommend and book vacations, track vacation expenses in Excel including track vacation home deposits getting returned.’
Alongside a holiday planner, the nanny would also be a chef to the family – all of whom are ‘allergic to cow and goat diary, chicken eggs, green beans and watermelon’ – with a total of 10 requirements based on their eating habits.
Naturally, the internet reacted to the advert, with The Guardian declaring it ‘the most demanding ad for a nanny ever’. Others questioned whether ‘such a nanny exists’. And while it does all seem a bit exhausting (to write the advert alone, let alone do the job), the mother who posted the advert has since said most mums can do all of the tasks she requires, and she is looking more for a ‘wife’ than a nanny.
‘If you’re a working woman, you need a wife,’ the mother – who has chosen to remain anonymous – told Slate. ‘Here it is January, and I’m having to spend hours of my time, like late at night, trying to figure out summer camp and get them signed up for sports and all that. [I’m a single parent] but if I had a two-parent household, I would assume that the other parent would at least be doing some of that, one would hope.’
If you’re a working woman, you need a wife
Calling out the reaction as sexist, she says if a CEO like Scott McNealy – former CEO of Sun Microsystems – had posted the advert ‘nobody would think twice’. And in fact, no one was actually meant to see the hefty list of requirements.
According to Slate, the mother sent the list to a firm that specialises in nanny placements that were consistency sending her candidates with ‘the wrong set of expertise’. She drafted the requirements to help the agency with interview questions and then posted the list to a ‘confidential’ job board, where it was taken and leaked to the rest of the web. Cue viral hysteria.
And actually, when you hear her defending herself, her demands don’t seem all that ridiculous. Especially given that the nanny would be earning £30 an hour, which totals to around £70,000 annual salary, and would have the option to live in the mother's ‘full kitchen one-bedroom pool house’ and get their own car worth £600 a month. More than that, the nanny gets full benefits and would travel all over the world with the family. Because, it seems that actually all this mother wants is another family member.
When asked about one requirement on the list – that the candidate should have ‘room in their hearts to love the kids and the mom’ – she told Slate she has always had close relationships with people who work in her home and includes them in family portraits.
‘I love the people I work with in my home,’ she said. ‘My housekeeper, who’s the cousin of my former nanny, we love each other like sisters…I don’t want somebody who’s just going to show up and do their job. I want somebody who over time I can develop a close, warm relationship with. We’re not talking working at Oracle, or at Salesforce. We’re talking working in my home, in my family.’
And in fact, she doesn’t think what she’s asking for is a ‘supernanny’, as so many have called it – she thinks it’s just the skills most women develop as mothers. Re-reading the job description after her defence, she might not be wrong.
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