Advice on hiring helper

We are returning to HK in December 2007 after an absence of 6.5yrs. We'd ideally like to have a helper available almost as soon as we arrive (I am in HK from now until 9 Nov) but I have heard conflicting advice re: hiring a locally available one versus hiring one and bringing her here from overseas.


We have 4 children (ages 10 to 17) but are mostly interested in help with cleaning and cooking rather than childcare.


Any advice from more seasoned readers would be appreciated (believe it or not, we didn't have a helper last time we lived here).


Drew

http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/helpers/

We've had a bad experience with hiring a locally available one. So we've been given advice on how to hire. They were:

1. If it's local:

- don't hire someone with more than 2 years work experience in HK

- try to find someone with a similar situation as yours i.e. experience handling a home with a large family.

- ALWAYS conduct a reference check. As far as possible, have a conversation with both couples. We interviewed one with a fake reference from a white male who pretended to be her ex employer.

- As far as possible, hire someone who has completed a contract or someone who has been terminated not for reasons other that would require them to return to their home country.


2. If not hiring local, hire someone who has had experience as a DH but not in HK. It's hard to train someone who has never been a DH. I usually discount their home country's experience. It's hard not to be biased but I find that the ones who are from larger cities in their home country are generally more able to cope with the job as they are quicker on the uptake especially if they are graduates (This has been based on our current needs and interviews - we interviewed dozens!). And as far as possible, try to interview them face to face. If English is your primary language need, I found this extremely necessary.


For our needs, we finally settled for someone who used to work in HK for a Canadian employer with a child of the same age. Both hubby and I spoke to her Canadian employers. We used Cara's list of questions (she's posted it once before - just do a search) during our interviews to weed out the better ones. She was in HK for an interview.

Spockey,


Thanks for the advice. I appreciate you taking time to give such a detailed reply.


Cheers,


Drew

well if you intrested on indonesian helper we can provide you let us know which tipes of helper you need mening to say english speaqker of just cantonese speaker.