Ready Kids › First Job Ready › Badge 2 › Lesson 2.3
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Finding work safely
Find sitting work through people you already know, and meet a new family for the first time with your own parent there.
1Watch
The message
The message
A phone. A message from an unknown number: hi, got your name from a friend, need a sitter Friday, can you come round at 7? A thumb hovers over the keyboard, and the film ends.
16 secondsProbably fine. The film stops before she decides how to find out.
2The idea
Where the work is
Family. Family friends. Neighbours. Parents of your friends. Your parents’ colleagues. Every one of those is a person somebody you know can vouch for. A job comes to you through a person who can be named. That is not a rule about being polite. It is how you check.
What is not on the list: a public post, a message from a number you do not know, an advert. Not because everyone posting is dangerous, but because you have no way to check, and checking is the whole point. The Two Questions: do I have permission, meaning a parent knows this family? Would I be happy telling Mum after, meaning she was there?
3The idea
The first meeting
1. A parent of yours knows who they are, or knows someone who does.
2. First meeting at their house, in daylight, your parent with you.
3. You meet the child.
4. You ask your questions: ages, times, how you get home, the rules.
5. You and your parent talk afterwards, on your own.
6. Then yes or no.
Nobody is hired in a message. You are hired at a kitchen table with your parent next to you. A family that hires real sitters expects this. They will have their own questions for you, and the ones who interview you properly are the ones you want.
4The idea
Ella's four leads
Ella is thirteen. Her aunt, kids of three and six. A neighbour two doors down her mum waves to. A mum from her brother’s football team. And a message from someone in a local group who saw her name somewhere. She ranks them: aunt, football mum, neighbour, and the message last.
The message gets a reply: thanks, my mum handles my bookings, here is her number. Then Ella’s mum decides. The unknown lead is not a no. It is a hand-it-to-a-parent. Three real leads, one sorted the right way, and Ella did not have to work out whether a stranger was telling the truth.
5Build it
Four leads
Four leads
Four job leads on cards. Drag them into order from easiest to check to hardest. Each card flips to show what a parent would want to know first about that lead.
The order is about how easy each one is to check, not about who seems nicest.
6Decide
A message from a number you do not know asks you to sit on Friday. What do you do?
Pick one to carry on.
7The idea
What a first meeting tells you
Check the Feeling Dial while you are there. Fine, Funny, Twitchy, Scared, Angry. Twitchy in that kitchen is information. Not proof of anything, but information, and you are allowed to act on it, which the next lesson is about. Also notice a parent who will not answer your questions, or who hurries you.
What good looks like: they show you round. They tell you the rules. They introduce the child. They ask you questions too. A parent who interviews you properly is a parent you want to work for. A parent who just wants a body in the house on Friday is telling you something.
8Find them
Which of these are leads you would take to a parent as a real option?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Say it
The line for anyone who skips the meeting
Say this back to anyone who asks you to come round without meeting first
“I'd like to come and meet you first, with my mum.”
Nobody hiring a real sitter will mind. Someone who does mind has told you something.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Write down three households you would actually approach: people you or your parents know. Show the list to a parent and ask which one to start with.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Work comes through people you know. First meeting: their house, daytime, your parent with you.
Next lesson: You can say no to a job