Au Pair Interview Questions: The Host Family's Video-Call Question Bank

Your sponsor's matching pool has surfaced three promising profiles, and now the whole decision rests on video calls — usually two calls of 45–60 minutes each with a candidate who is 18 to 26, several time zones away, and interviewing in her second language. That is very little data for deciding who moves into your home for a year.

This is the full question bank: 52 questions organized by what each one actually reveals — childcare judgment, independence, driving, cultural fit, and program readiness — with notes on what strong and concerning answers sound like. It slots into Phase 3 of our step-by-step au pair hiring guide and adapts our nanny interview questions bank for what makes an au pair match different.

Why an Au Pair Interview Is Different From a Nanny Interview

The sponsor has already vetted credentials: candidates must be 18–26, secondary-school graduates, and pass a criminal background check, a personality profile, and reference verification before they reach your pool. What no sponsor can screen for is what decides the year — judgment with your specific children, the maturity to live 5,000 miles from home, and fit with your household. Four adjustments:

• Simplify your phrasing. Most candidates interview in their second language — one question at a time, no idioms. A slow, considered answer often signals more than a fluent rehearsed one.
• Calibrate the experience bar. You are interviewing a capable young adult with babysitting or nursery experience, not a career nanny. If you need the latter, read our au pair vs. nanny comparison before you match.
• Remember it is mutual. She is choosing you too, within a regulated program — no more than 10 hours of childcare per day and 45 per week.
• Interview twice. Call one is both parents, no kids. Call two brings the children in for 10–15 minutes and re-checks anything thin.

The 45-Minute Matching-Call Script

You will not get through all 52 questions — don't try. This allocation keeps a first call moving while touching every category:

Save motivation (41–46) and the infant add-ons (47–51) for the second call, where they get real time.

Childcare Judgment: Questions 1–12

These separate candidates who have run a day with children from candidates who have watched one happen.

1. Walk me through a typical day at your last childcare job, hour by hour.
2. What ages have you cared for, and what did you actually do — feeding, bathing, bedtime, school runs?
3. Tell me about a time a child got hurt on your watch. What happened, and what did you do?
4. A toddler melts down in the middle of a grocery store. What do you do first?
5. Our 7-year-old says, "You're not my mom — I don't have to listen to you." What's your response?
6. How do you get a 4-year-old out the door on time without a battle?
7. The baby won't stop crying and nothing is working. What do you do?
8. The kids are fighting over a toy. When do you step in, and when do you let them sort it out?
9. What's your view on screen time when you're in charge?
10. A child flatly refuses dinner. What happens next?
11. When would you call us at work instead of handling something yourself?
12. When would you call 911 before calling us?

Strong answers: specific, past-tense stories with the child's age and the outcome, and clear escalation instincts on 11 and 12 — handle the scraped knee, call you about the fever. Pause on: adjectives instead of events ("I'm very patient"), punishment-first discipline, or no hard-day story at all — everyone who has really done this work has one.

Independence and Maturity: Questions 13–21

Homesickness and isolation end more matches early than childcare failures do. This category predicts month three.

13. Have you lived away from home before? What was the longest stretch?
14. What will you miss most, and what's your plan for the hard weeks?
15. How do you earn and manage your own money right now?
16. Can you cook? What can you actually make?
17. Tell me about a disagreement with a boss, teacher, or parent — how did you raise it?
18. What do you do on a free Saturday at home?
19. In your last job, when something went wrong, who fixed it — you or someone else?
20. What's the hardest thing you've done on your own?
21. If you were homesick in month two, would we know? How?

Strong answers: real time spent away from home, plus a concrete coping plan — Sunday calls home, a gym, the other au pairs in the area. Pause on: a candidate who has never spent a week away and answers "I'll be fine" with no specifics, or a parent hovering off-screen feeding answers. You want the voice that will be alone in your kitchen at 7am.

Driving: Questions 22–30

The gap between "has a license" and "can do the preschool run in traffic" is where matches strain. If your family needs a driver, make this its own segment.

22. When did you get your license, and how often do you drive now — daily, weekly, rarely?
23. Whose car do you drive at home? Manual or automatic?
24. What's the longest single drive you've done?
25. Have you driven on a highway at night, or in heavy rain? How did it feel?
26. Have you ever had an accident or a near-miss? What happened?
27. Have you driven with children in the car?
28. Have you driven in snow or ice? (Skip if irrelevant to your metro.)
29. How would you want to learn our routes in the first two weeks?
30. If you failed an American driving test, how would you handle that?

Strong answers: drives at least weekly, names the car, describes real routes, and is honest about limits — "I've never driven on the right side of the road, so I'd want practice runs first." Pause on: licensed two years ago but can't name the last time she drove, or a profile that says "confident driver" while the interview can't describe any driving in detail. That gap predicts other gaps.

A note from Beverly

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Cultural Fit and Household Expectations: Questions 31–40

Most rematch stories that aren't about homesickness are about household friction — food, tidiness, guests, weekends. Surface it all now, while everyone can still walk away.

31. What does dinner look like at your house — together at a table, or everyone on their own schedule?
32. How do you feel about pets? Our dog sleeps inside — is that okay with you?
33. What foods can't you or won't you eat?
34. Honestly, how tidy is your bedroom at home right now?
35. What's your ideal weekend social life during your year here?
36. How do you feel about house rules — guests, quiet hours, telling us when you'll be home late?
37. What holidays and traditions matter to you, and what would you love to share with our kids?
38. Both of us work from home — how does that change your picture of the job? (Adapt to your reality.)
39. What are you most excited to do in America that has nothing to do with childcare?
40. A year from now, what would make you say this was a great year?

Strong answers: engagement with your specifics — follow-ups about the dog, the neighborhood, what your kids eat — and honest small confessions ("my room is a disaster, but shared spaces stay clean"). Pause on: answers that idealize everything, or discomfort when house rules come up. A candidate who can't discuss expectations on a video call won't raise problems in your kitchen either.

Motivation and Program Readiness: Questions 41–46

The program is a cultural exchange with an education requirement — at least six semester hours of academic credit, toward which you contribute up to $500. Candidates who understand what they signed up for finish their year; candidates chasing a vague adventure are the rematch pool of November.

41. Why the United States, and why a childcare year instead of a study program?
42. What do you plan to study for your education requirement?
43. What did your parents say when you told them you were doing this?
44. What worries you most about the year?
45. What would make you want to leave a host family? (Yes, ask it directly.)
46. What have you heard about our area — anything you're curious about?

Strong answers: a concrete reason for this program, this year, plus a real answer to question 45 — "I'd want to rematch if I felt like staff instead of family" is mature, not alarming. Pause on: no study plan, parents who don't know about the year, or a question-41 answer entirely about escaping something.

Infant and Toddler Add-Ons: Questions 47–52

If any of your children will be under 2 at arrival, federal rules require the au pair to have at least 200 hours of documented infant childcare experience — and if your baby is under 3 months, an au pair may never be the sole caregiver. Our infant-qualified au pair guide covers the rule; these questions test whether the hours produced competence.

47. Whose babies were your infant hours with — what ages, how often, over how long?
48. Walk me through putting a 6-month-old down for a nap, start to finish.
49. How do you prepare a bottle of formula?
50. The baby has been crying for 20 minutes. Run me through your sequence of checks.
51. What's the difference between a day with a 10-month-old and a day with a 3-year-old?
52. What questions do you have for us? (The universal closer — and the most diagnostic question on this list.)

On question 48, listen for safe-sleep basics without prompting: baby on her back, in her own crib, nothing loose in it. On question 52, a candidate with no questions at all — nothing about your kids' temperaments, your rules — is not taking the match seriously.

Red Flags That Should End the Match

None of these is fatal alone on a nervous first call. Two or more, persisting into the second call, and you should keep looking:

• Generic answers everywhere — no names, no ages, no incidents, just "I love children" on repeat.
• No questions for you. A serious candidate is also interviewing your family.
• Coaching off-screen. Whispered answers mean you haven't actually met the person moving in.
• Profile–interview mismatch — claimed skills that dissolve under two follow-up questions.
• Punishment-first discipline instincts, or irritation at normal small-child behavior.
• Resistance to the expectations conversation. If house rules are awkward to discuss now, they will be worse to enforce.

The pattern the Beverly team sees in matches that fail is rarely a skills gap — it is a family that interviewed for warmth and forgot to interview for independence. The candidate who has never spent a week away from home is the one being counseled through homesickness by week three, however good she was with your toddler on the call.

How to Decide After the Second Call

Score each finalist 1–5 on the six categories above, the same day, before you and your partner compare notes — independent scoring surfaces the disagreements that matter. Require story-based evidence for any 4 or higher: if you can't cite the answer that earned it, it was charm, not data.

Then move. Strong candidates are typically gone from the pool within days: a standard match takes 8–12 weeks from commitment to arrival, while in-country rematch candidates can arrive in 1–3 weeks. Torn between two good candidates? Break the tie on independence, not chemistry — chemistry shows up in month one either way; independence is what is still there in month seven.

If you would rather not run six interviews across time zones yourself, Beverly's coordinators draft family-specific question sets and sit in on matching calls — see how that works at beverly.io.

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Even though we work to keep the information, stats, and details in this article accurate and up to date, please do your own financial and legal due diligence before acting on anything you read here, and reach out directly to the private companies and government agencies referenced for the most current details.