So basically, I had a friend from work who decided to become an Au Pair in Australia and I thought it was an amazing idea and I knew it would be something that I loved but I loved the USA so decided to go there instead! I then went home, googled 'au pair in america' and that's where I found the company (conveniently named) Au Pair in America. I looked at the website and read through all of the information given online, requested a brochure and then once that had come through, started the application process. They looked like such a friendly, helpful company who just wanted to make sure that you had the most amazing experience ever, and from my experience so far with them - everyone I have deal with have just been exactly that!
APPLYING!
Now, applying for anything, whether that be for a job or university can be very boring and time consuming, but not with this. It's a simple online application form in which you basically tell all about yourself. There are 10 sections on the actual application form plus you have a seperate section for your childcare experience. It may seem like a lot, but really it isn't! You have your own page which you can log into and make sure all the information is good, and change it as and when needed. One of the great things about APiA is that there is someone from the onset helping you out. You get assigned an interviewer who checks your application and lets you know where you need to make any changes to your application- for example, if you need to add more references to your childcare experience - and they are the person that you go to when you do have your interview. Although the actual application was fairly straighforward, there are some things that make the process longer. For example, I only passed my driving test in October, whereas I began applying in August, so I had to wait until I had my license to fill everything else in! Also, getting a medical form can be a bit of a pain (depending on your country/doctor), I never had a vaccination for tuberculosis, so I then had to go for a chest X-Ray which obviously took time. Getting all of the childcare and character references also took a while, but it wasn't that bad! Once everything is done it's so good! If i was to give any advice - try and get everything out of the way as quickly as possible!
Thankfully now I'm pretty much done - I've had my interview with my interviewer Brenda at the offices in Hertfordshire, so all I need to do now is wait for my CRB check to come through, upload that onto my site and then hopefully my site will become 'live' so host families can start to find me! Fingers crossed!
Check my next post to read about the interview :)
Much love,
Jodie xo
A screenshot of my APiA application site :)
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