When choosing a maid for your household, there are a few key things to consider:
- Experience: Are you looking for someone with experience or you are willing to take time to train up the person? Do consider that the helper/Migrant Domestic Worker (MDW) may come from a country where English is not their first language. As such, there is also a language barrier to overcome and something to take into consideration.
For experienced maids or transfer maids, this barrier is usually much lower as they have spent time in Singaporean households and may have picked up English (or even Singlish). In fact, we have mandarin speaking maids or some maids speak hokkien/teochew too!
Further, if you are looking for an experienced maid, what you are to look out for is relevant experience – someone with elder care experience versus child-care experience. It is very different - Compatibility: Schedule an interview to get to know the maid and see if their personality and work style is a good fit for your household. Pay attention to the verbal and non-verbal cues. Not just you, try to involve the family or people who will be spending a lot of time with the helper too e.g. your mother, child etc.
- Reliable Maid Agency: Make sure to work with a reliable maid agency to assist you in finding you a suitable helper for your household. It could be a friend’s recommended maid agency or your family’s trusted maid agency that they have used for a long time. The maid agency is important as
- Budget: It is also important to stick to your budget. After all, apart from the maid’s salary, there are other considerations such as MDW levy , monthly upkeep (meals, toiletries etc.) to keep in mind.