Put Babysitting on a Resume

Whether you’re putting together a resume for a childcare position or other professional role, babysitting jobs can be a great addition. Most directly, babysitting roles on your resume will show that you have experience working with and managing children. However, babysitting demonstrates skills and experiences that will transfer to all sorts of other jobs. If you’re applying for a job in childcare or don’t have much other work experience, you can include babysitting on your resume in the experience section, under the skills portion, and as part of your references list. However, if you’re further along in your career or applying to a different field, focus on incorporating things you’ve learned from babysitting into the skills section to highlight transferable knowledge.

Steps

Listing Babysitting in the Experience Section

1. Add a single entry for all your babysitting jobs under the “Experience” section. Most resumes have an “Experience” section where you list all your work experience. To include babysitting here, list the title “Babysitting,” the location of the families (city and state), and the dates you babysat. Rather than listing each babysitting job individually, combine all your experiences into a single listing.
   • List the overall months and years in which you babysat, even if you only did it sporadically and/or for different families during that time.
   • When you format your resume, start the Experience section with a heading like “Relevant Experience” or “Professional Experience.” Then list your jobs in reverse chronological order, including the name of each job, it’s location, and the dates you worked there. For example, a babysitting listing would read “Childcare Provider, Buffalo, New York, May 2018- Present” or “Babysitter, Self-Employed, Seattle, Washington, June 2015- January 2019.”
   • If you’ve had a few long-term babysitting roles and are making a resume to apply for another childcare role, you may want to break this rule and list out different roles individually. This way, you can highlight your most relevant experience and demonstrate your ability to commit to the families you work for.
2. Use the title “childcare provider” to sound more professional. Fair or not, the term “babysitter” sometimes carries young or unimpressive connotations. “Childcare provider,” on the other hand, can sound much more professional but is still a perfectly accurate and truthful way to describe your role. Although you never want to lie on your resume, it’s fine to describe your job in a more professional and targeted way.
   • Did you provide childcare on a regular schedule and get paid by the week or month? You may want to include the title “nanny” rather than “babysitter.” Although the terminology is up for debate, nannies tend to have permanent work as full-time employees and are more involved in the child’s ongoing care and development.
3. Describe your babysitting responsibilities using action words. When you include a job in your “Experience” section, use a short paragraph or bulleted list to describe your responsibilities in that role. Action verbs— such as cared, created, played, ensured, helped, cleaned, prepared, coordinated, or managed— are a great way to describe your work because they demonstrate that you are proactive and responsible.
   • On your resume, include this description directly underneath the listing for the job. You can format it as either bullet points or a short paragraph.
   • For example, you could describe a babysitting role with a paragraph like this: “Cared for children from ages 2-9 during evenings and occasionally overnight. Prepared meals and ensured children were fed, bathed, and put to bed. Assisted children with school homework and assigned reading activities.”
   • You might describe a more long-term position as: “Cared for 2 children aged 4 and 6 between school hours and parents’ return from work. Coordinated play dates and school pick-ups with other families. Created innovative and educational games that helped to advance both children’s reading abilities.”
4. Emphasize tasks that are relevant to whatever job you’re applying for. The job descriptions on your resume should highlight any experiences that you think would transfer well to the role you’re applying for. While you shouldn’t invent responsibilities you didn’t have, babysitting teaches you plenty of transferable skills that could be relevant to the job you want.
   • Include descriptions of duties like coordinating children’s activities, managing difficult personalities, negotiating pay rate, preparing food, and helping with homework.
   • Describe your relevant experiences in a professional way. For example, you might write "resolved conflict situations" rather than "broke up fights between two brothers."
   • For example, if you’re applying for a teaching position, make sure your description of your babysitting roles include any academic assistance you provided as a caregiver, such as tutoring, guidance with homework, or reading help.

Highlighting Babysitting Accomplishments under Skills

1. Include CPR and first aid certifications under the “Skills” section. Most resumes include a section entitled “Skills” that includes any abilities that will help you succeed in a role. This can include certifications or experiences you didn’t have room for in the “Experience” or “Education” sections of the resume. Also add in any babysitting courses or trainings, first aid classes, or CPR certifications you’ve completed.
   • Start this section of your resume with a heading that reads “Skills” and format it as a list with a single bullet point for each skill.
   • If you’re not applying for a childcare-specific role, babysitting courses may be less relevant and you can leave them off if you need to conserve space on your resume. First aid and CPR certifications, however, are relevant to more types of positions— including most roles in the service industry— so you may want to keep these on.
2. List specific or unique situations that you’ve handled. Even if you don’t have any official certifications related to it, you can include skills you have that are relevant to the position. This is especially true if you’re applying for another childcare or babysitting job. If the job posting calls for it, skills like potty training, food preparation, diaper changing, bottle feeding, and athletic coaching can all be great additions to your resume.
   • If you’ve worked with children with a specific disability, this is also a great skill to add to your list. For example, you could include “well-versed in caring for children with autism and Down syndrome” as a bullet point under the skills section.
3. Add any subject-specific tutoring experience as a skill. If part of your babysitting job included tutoring or consistently helping students with their homework, you can absolutely include this as a skill. Try something along the lines of “Tutoring in elementary-level math and reading.”
4. Remember to include “soft skills” like time management and multitasking. Most employers are looking to hire candidates with certain abilities known as “soft skills” such as communication, problem-solving, and leadership. These traits are similar to “social” or “people” skills in that they can’t be easily taught but are applicable to a wide range of job-related tasks.
   • Babysitting helps you develop many soft skills that will be applicable to other jobs, including patience, problem solving, conflict resolution, communication and relationship building, multitasking, scheduling, and self-reliance.
   • If you can, demonstrate these soft skills with examples in the Experience section of your resume. For example, you could list “time management and scheduling” as a bullet point under the Skills heading and also include “coordinated play dates, sports practices, tutoring and other scheduling for 3 children” in one of your job descriptions.

Incorporating Babysitting References

1. Create a “References” page or section on your resume. Strong references to your reliability, character, punctuality, and skill as a babysitter can be a great addition to your resume.
   • Generally, you’ll want to create a separate document just for references, since they take up a lot of valuable space on the page. However, if completed resume is looking too empty, you can choose to include your references as a separate section at the bottom of your resume itself.
2. Determine 3-5 people who will speak highly of your ability and character. If you have previous babysitting experience, parents who you’ve worked for before will likely be the most relevant references. If you’re new to babysitting, you could also ask former employers or colleagues from other fields, especially if they are related to childcare in some way.
   • If you don’t have any previous work experience, you can also ask teachers and mentors from your school, family members (bonus points if you’ve ever watched their children or pets!), religious leaders, or volunteer coordinators.
   • If you’ve ever worked as a tutor, camp counselor, swim instructor, or sports coach, your supervisors and colleagues may be able to provide strong references for you since they can speak to your ability to work with children.
3. Get permission from your references before listing them on your resume. Not only is asking first the polite thing to do, it will also make sure your references prepared if and when they’re contacted by a potential employer. Before you put someone on your reference list, ask “would you be willing to serve as a supportive reference for me?” This will make sure your references are all in the loop and are willing to say positive things about you.
   • Ask people to serve as references before you actually apply to jobs. That way, you won’t have to scramble when your potential employer asks you for your reference list.
4. Include contact information for each of your references. For each of reference, list their name, their phone number, and their email address. Also include an identifier to explain their relationship to you, such as “Former Babysitting Client” or “Current Childcare Client.” If the reference is a former non-babysitting employer, you should include their title and company rather than their relationship to you.
   • For example, you could list a parent you’ve previously babysat for as “Anne Johnson, Former Childcare Client, 712-446-9902, ajohnson@gmail.com.”
   • A former professional employer could be included with a listing such as “Timothy Firth, Manager, Stintville YMCA Day Camp, 212-445-6689, timfirth@stintvilleymca.org.”

Tips

• Babysitting resumes should be just as professional as any other resume. Don’t try to make your resume overly decorative by using bright paper, glitter, markers, or pictures. Remember that the parents, not the children, will be reading and judging the resume!
• Avoid using slang in your resume, especially if you’re applying to babysitting jobs with parents who are older than you.
• If you’re not trying to work in childcare, you may want to remove babysitting roles from your resume after you’ve had a few internships or jobs in your field.

References

See also

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