Urgent: in a Dliema, help please

Hi All,


i am in desperate need of a FT helper. I am pregnant and due on 2nd June and am finding is very hard to cope with daily household work (have a 4 yeards old kid).


I have been looking at some direct hires from philipnes but am told that it would take 6-8 weeks for them to come here which is dangerously close to my due date .

I am worried about a scenario wherein I would go in Labour a little before the actualy due date.


Now i have come across a helper here in HK (i have to admit i did not have a lot of times to search for HK helpers) who has finished the contract. the benefit of hers is that her contract has finished and she can join us in 2 weeks when her visa gets ready.


She has been here for 2 years and with some brazilian/chinese couple. She says she used to do household work + took care of the 3 years old chid. so the experience as such makes sense to me.


Now the problem is this, she says her previous employers dont want to talk to anyone. she just has a reference letter saying that she worked for them for 2 years. nothing more than that. I asked her why she does not want to continue with them. she told me that they wanted her to continue but she chose not to as they had dkeot her passport and other document with them. They alo restrict her mobule phone usage etc.


I am little skeptical on this. Sometimes I feel she is telling the truth but sometimes I feel there is something wrong with it. i know it really depends. But would you trust her and hire her in this casE? the HK job is the only job she has done so there is n other employer to cross check this. what d you think can be the reason they employers are so much against her and dont want to talk? can she be telling the truth? what would you have done this this case?


Apparently she looks ok and talked nicely. but its easy to fake this for such a short period of time. i asked her if she could request her employers to just speak to me for 2 mins. she says she asked them but they did not reply.


pls give me your views. My backup is to hire form philipnes (i liked 2 ) but then there is this wait period which is dangerous for me. i have looked into other HK helpers who have finished contract but not all of them want work with children etc. i will keep looking but need to decide on this one very soon. pls help

It looks like your gut instinct is telling you not to go with this one, and judging by the posts on this forum in the past, most employers who had dishonest, incompetent or untrainable helpers usually still write a very bland reference letter (just stating when to when the helper worked for them )because most are mindful enough that whatever flaws these girls may have they do in fact need the job and money and won't completely destroy their future employment potential.


I think that you can get an expedited visa if you write a letter to immigration pleading your case and go down there personally but you have to get a move on! I've known people who have had the visa turned around in about 4 weeks.


Other way to go is to use local maids to do part time house work whilst you waited for the direct hired in the usual amount of time.


I'm not too sure why you waited so long to sort things out given you knew what the estimated due date was (you may have your reasons), which has now led you into a particularly stressful situation when you need calm in your third trimester BUT I do think that a quick fix at this point in time (hiring this helper who quite frankly sounds kind of dodgy) is likely to lead to more stress, more cost later down the track....but you never know and you may get lucky and she may turn out to be perfect for your family. All the best with it all.

I have always felt that references are only important if they come from someone you know. If a previous employer doesn't want to be talked to, don't attach too much importance to this fact. Lots of old employers don't want to "talk", even if the helper is great.


On the other hand, as lagrue says, trust your gut instinct. If you love the person, hire her despite absence of references. If you are worried, don't.


I would recommend getting a second opinion. Get a trusted friend/relative/husband to interview the candidate and see what they think.

I feel that you must be very confident that you want to hire before you hire. If there's hesitation, I would agree with axptguy that you need a second opinion.


If you do feel you like the ones in Phillipines, it takes about 6 weeks for them to get here. You could use a part timer (call the local govt job centre) to help you before your helper arrives. These locals will even be able to cook healthy chinese soups for you. I know a friend who did this. She ended up paying 5k for a month for up to two months for help from 9am-6pm while waiting for a helper. Her husband left home at 7.30am in the morning and came back at 7pm so she only had a very short time alone with her baby. You'll be surprised at how well you can handle a newborn and a four year old. I am doing this right now. I have a helper but I handle my newborn and my 5 year old myself and she doesn't do much apart from the cooking and the cleaning. A part timer is able to do this until your full time helper comes.

I would say rushing into employing a helper, without a verbal reference from the last employer, could be a decision you might regret.

Go with one of the legal part-time agencies, for a helper, who will help you with the housework, until you come across a good employer recommended helper, perhaps from an expat family leaving Hk, an employer who has had a fantastic helper will 'bend over backwards" to help their trusted employee find a really nice family to live with.

With a baby coming soon it is worth taking the extra time to find a good fit for you and your family.

Also regarding direct hire, only my personal opinion, this is like mail order shopping, the goods you recieve ( the helper), could be good, bad or indifferent, it is a lucky dip. There are many helpers back in their home countries, who have previously worked in HK, and couldn't get jobs here because nobody wanted them for various reasons, and they are often on the list again for direct hire.

Who ever you do eventually hire, have a full health check done on them, before they sign the contract with you, and take out helper insurance, for yours and their safety.

"Both employer and helper are taking risk."


Very true, and something all too many forget or ignore. It is, at a certain point, a leap of faith.

I suggest that if you can't get a verbal reference that you can go another route and give her a day trial. This is one good thing about having someone already in HK. Ask her to come to your house for a day (although not technically legal, you can give her a gift to cover expenses) Then observe she is with your older child. Cook lunch with her in the kitchen and while you are in there together ask her relevant questions about meal prep.

Chat with her about disipline and ask her how she handles certain scenariaios (ex. a temper tantrum) or perhaps your 4 year old will oblige you and give you one while she is there. :)

At the end of the time ask yourself how you feel about her. how did you child react to her, is she comfortable in the kitchen during meal prep. This is worth more than a 2 minute phone call in my opinion.

Good luck.

She said that the employeers took her passport and "documents" for 2 years and also kept her mobile phone. so she could not talk to her family and kids. They wanted her to conintue after the 1st contract and when she refused, they refused to give her some decent reference letter and also refused to talk to the future employers.


Now pls give your views on this story too. i know anything is possible but just wanted your views on this.

i was thinking that if she has been so bad, they would not have kept her for 2 years? unless she did something which was revealed towards the end of those 2 yearss............... ?

I don't find it believable that the employers took her mobile for 2 years, it would be more believable if she admitted that she had been on the phone a lot then the employers removed her phone giving it back to her on her day off......this part of the explanation just doesn't sound credible.......about withholding the documents, did you challenge her as to why they would do this, to help keep them safe for her, that she's been caught out taking loans she can't pay off.......,dig deeper and see if her answers are credible.......


I wish to also point out to you that finished contracts helpers are very much sort after and they are choosy. Helpers have their own ranking in terms of job desirability and expats, no Sahm, followed by local Chinese, no children, followed by one child, followed by two children ect.......you get my drift........I m sure you know this yourself from your own interview process when helpers with finished contract and solid employment history, hear your situation they won't even bother turning up for an interview unless your pay sack tips the balance in your favor.......


Also, it's pretty obvious to us and probably her that you are desperate and desperate people tend to make poor decisions. I hope for your sake and your families that you take a step back and try to envisage a long term solution rather than just sorting things out for the next few weeks.

I 'm not trying to be harsh but to have you avoid my similar situation with my very first helper when I too was he'll bent on taking on a helper so that I could tick that box and move onto the next problem as a working mom, but it back fired as I didn't do my due diligence.......helper was skimming grocery bills, on the phone all the time, let my baby sleep for up to 4-5 hours a day against my wishes so that my dear child would be up to midnight and grizzly when I returned home from work.........since then I have realized that taking time to find the right fit results in longevity of the employer helper relationship and I have yet to terminate since

She may have had her passport removed by her previous employers to prevent her taking out loans, which is wrong but I have heard some do it if their employee gets in constant trouble with loan sharks. There is always the possibily loan sharks may have kept it.