In today’s society family life is busier than ever, many parents are often stretched work-wise and have children that do a number of school and extra-curricular activities. It takes a great deal of organising for most families to stay on top of things. As a consequence of this, employers need to be able to rely on their domestic staff for more than just the basic duties, indeed, the modern family needs a top housekeeper who can turn her hand to a quick PA duty without a second thought. A nanny-PA who knows how to run events is a complete delight when you've got your ten-year-old twins birthday around the corner and have to get a presentation in at work tomorrow.
A family with an international busy working lifestyle might require any number of tasks and responsibilities to be completed. The typical day could entail various tasks which require someone flexible and quick-thinking and who can cover different roles if necessary. These families welcome someone (or often a couple) who can cover a number of combined elements that traditionally might have only been advertised as individual and quite specific roles. For the client the multi-skilled candidate who can competently carry out over-arching duties between roles is of high value and as such rewarded accordingly.
A candidate who is able to care for children, cook nutritious meals and perhaps has experience with horses might be just what one family is looking for. The talented gardener who is also adept at basic handy-man jobs and has experience as a decorator will be in high demand. The traditional butler who has experience as a security guard can now move into the house manager style role.
If you are looking for work as a couple and you or your partner have skills on top of the specific advertised role it is worth letting your consultant know what these skills are (as long as they are of domestic use).
If you are a client looking for a team or couple who can cover duties together and you want to have that one point of call you can trust, then consider candidates with extra skills. It is a comfort for any household to know that if you go away with your family you can leave the house and animals in the care of a professional and competent pair of hands.
A list of some of the extra-helpful skills and experience might include the following:
Office and computer-based experience, communications experience, cooking, hospitality, musical interest, languages, teaching, sewing, knitting, art, fashion, wardrobe management, fragile textiles handling, silver and antique cleaning, caring for elderly, childcare, animal care, horse-rider and sports person, handy-man, painter-decorator, builder, designer, driver, security, yoga and mindfulness, sports therapy.
Candidates – make sure your CV includes the skills that you think are transferable as above.
Clients – look for those transferable skills and a flexible confident attitude.
Are you looking for a career in Domestic Service? Take a look at our jobs page here to see our latest vacancies or contact our recruitment team on 020 385 49945.
