Yossi has served as VP Sales & Marketing for Nemesysco, where he gained significant experience in the field of credibility assessment and integrity tests. Prior to Nemesysco, he has held the positions of VP of EMEA for Expand Networks and Director of Sales & Business Development for Tadiran Telecom. He has, a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion Institute of Technology, Israel and an MBA from Henley Management College in the UK.
Yossi is a father to a daughter, age 14 and two sons (10 and 2.5) and has employed over the years 3 nannies and one au pair.
Edina: Yossi, thank you for much for talking to our readers about your innovative business, TakeCare! I am excited to have the opportunity to talk to you about your new au pair screening test, called the NannyTest, which is available to host parents to ensure they are making a good, safe match.
Yossi, can you tell us more about your business and what NannyTest is all about?
A New Way to Screen Au Pairs
Pinkas: Thank you Edina for giving me the opportunity to introduce the NannyTest to America. TakeCare’s mission is to improve the screening process of caregivers by providing parents with an access to a professional screening tool. Our NannyTest allows parents to gain a better insight into an au pair’s personality traits as well as highlight possible risk factors.
Edina: How did you start your business and what motivated you to design and offer a childcare screening test to parents worldwide?
Pinkas: I started my business by partnering with a leading provider of psychological assessment tools and had them develop a screening tool that is specifically designed for the assessment of au pairs, nannies, babysitters and other childcare caregivers, and making it easy enough to use by non-professionals.
Before founding TakeCare, I worked for a company developing and marketing various screening tools for corporate and government customers. When my wife and I started looking for a nanny for my youngest child, I realized that we really could have benefited from a childcare screening tool, but there were no tests available for parents at that time. It took me a year or so to gather enough courage to start my own company that would provide a test that could help parents to better screen the person they hired to care for their children!
Edina: Who designed your test? What steps did they take to check the validity of NannyTest?
How the Nanny Test is Designed
Pinkas: Psiphas Psychological Applications, a leading vendor of psychological assessment tools, designed NannyTest. Psiphas has been designing tests for nearly 20 years and serves major government and corporate customers such as FedEx and IKEA.
Our personality assessment is based on the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) that has been well researched and validated in numerous studies by various researchers. The CPI is used extensively in the U.S. for individual personality screening and enjoys an excellent and popular reputation for its usefulness among psychologists.
I do wish to emphasize the NannyTest, as any psychological tool, is not and can never be 100% accurate. NannyTest should be used as part of a complete screening process, along with interviews, reference checks, etc., and test results should never be used as the sole factor in making a hiring decision.
Edina: Yes, of course, no psychological test can ever be 100% accurate! Certainly, a host parent would use the NannyTest in conjunction with the phone interview, criminal background checks, all other references, etc. Yossi, I am familiar with CPI, a highly respected and valid test that is recognized worldwide by the American Psychological Association (APA). It is impressive that the NannyTest is based on this worldwide known inventory.
Parents Receive a Written Report Summary
What I like about your test is the fact host parents receive a prospective au pair's summary report in an easy to read format. They now have control over a key part of the au pair's screening! This new technology is revolutionary for the au pair industry and I am not sure if parents understand how fortunate they are to have this kind of screening available to them at this time.
You really have to get the word out about this new and exciting development in the au pair interviewing process.
Pinkas: Yes, of course, we are spreading the word and, as a result, we are enjoying a very good response from childcare agencies worldwide. Thank you Edina for the opportunity to inform and educate host parents about the NannyTest.
Edina: As you know, the 13 legal au pair agencies in the United States are required by the Department of State to conduct personality screening on each prospective au pair. Therefore, by law, each au pair approved by each agency has already undergone a personality “test.”
When should parents conduct a second screening? Under what circumstances should host parents conduct a second screening?
Pinkas: As a matter of fact, the accurate wording of the Department of State requirement is “Personality Profile” rather than “Personality screening.” Not all tests designed to build a Personality Profile can be used to screen job applicants.
Two Critical Weaknesses of Current Au Pair Screening Tests
I have noticed that some agencies are using tests that are designed for job counseling rather than for screening job applicants, and serve the au pairs more than they serve the parents, telling an au pair whether a childcare position matches her inclinations and preferences, rather than assessing whether the au pair has the capabilities or personal traits required to perform the job.
Furthermore, typical personality tests lack the component of risk assessment, which I consider to be the most critical component of the screening process.
Edina: You make an excellent point here and I agree – several of the tests currently used by au pair agencies do not identify traits required to perform childcare duties nor do they assess potential risks.
In addition, not all American au pair agencies use the same personality test and some tests are better than others.
For example, one agency simply uses a series of questions they developed themselves, with “yes” or “no” responses. For example, “Do you see things that are not there? Do you hear voices coming from the TV?” Many au pairs who “see things that are not there” would be inclined to say “no” since they may feel paranoid about answering “yes” or they may be secretive about their visions and want to keep them hidden (for good reason). But, that would not help an agency to identify a risk factor here at all – and this au pair may “pass” such a test and be accepted into the program based on her ability to “hide” her pathology (i.e., hallucinations).
The list of questions this particular agency uses was created by the agency instead of a psychologist or team of psychologists and has no checks for its validity. It appears that the Department of State is okay with au pair agencies using their own “homemade” personality tests.
Why Would You NOT Rely on the Experts?
Do you think host parents should be concerned about this? Why is it important to use tests that are designed by experts/psychologists?
Pinkas: Host parents should definitely be concerned about it. Constructing questionnaires and tests should only be done by professionals with expertise in Psychometrics. Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of educational and psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits.
Constructing proper tests requires knowledge and expertise in both Psychology and Statistics. When questionnaires and tests are designed by non-professionals, one can never know how reliable and valid are the tests, and whether the results have any significance at all.
Edina: This is of great concern to me and should be for all host parents. If they are not comfortable with their agency’s au pair personality test, they should consider using your NannyTest for peace of mind!
Yossi, can you tell our readers how your NannyTest was validated?
Pinkas: Our test is based on the CPI (California Psychological Inventory) for personality assessment. Many research studies have validated the CPI and ithas been extensively used in the U.S. for many years. The risk assessment validity results from both construct validity of the test itself and the concurrent validity of the algorithms that were developed using discriminate analysis (and I do apologize if most readers are unfamiliar with those terms but I cannot explain it in a simple way without diving into a rather long lecture).
What Makes the NannyTest Unique?
Edina: Yossi, would you tell us about your test and what it measures?
Pinkas: The NannyTest is unique in combining both personality testing and risk assessment into a single test.
In the personality test part we evaluate personal traits suitability for the role of a caregiver. Those traits include responsibility, obedience and discipline, self-control, emotional stability, coping with pressure, service awareness and positive attitude.
The risk assessment part of the tests identifies risks related to violent behavior, drug abuse, drinking habits, general integrity, truthful reporting, respect for property (theft), commitment to place of work, bribery and gambling habits.
The test is an interactive online test and can be performed anywhere and anytime. It includes some 300 hundred questions, takes some 30 minutes to complete and requires the applicant to be fluent in reading English, Spanish or Portuguese.
Edina: I think both components are equally important, risk assessment and personality traits, and critical when screening au pairs (or nannies). Working with au pairs for many years, I can confirm that not all au pairs are “suited” for childcare. They may be lovely young people, friendly and pleasant, but they do not have the particular traits needed to care for children all day: patience and good judgment are two that come to mind immediately.
Risk assessment is a critical piece of the puzzle when interviewing for a safe childcare giver. Parents need to know if their au pair is truthful, non-violent and certainly, does not struggle with addiction problems (drugs, alcohol or gambling).
Host Parents Need More Information
Although au pair agencies must administer psychometric tests to all of their prospective au pairs, they are not required to share the results with host parents. Agencies could send host parents a report of the au pair’s results, if only just a brief, one page summary, but they don’t.
When parents use your test, they receive a report within minutes after the prospective au pair completes the test online. Would you tell us what the report includes? Would you talk about your report that is sent to parents?
Pinkas: The test report has been designed very carefully to be easily understood by parents and does not require any professional background to understand the results!
The first part of the report is a summary, showing whether it is safe to hire the au pair or if certain risks were identified. Only if no risk is identified, will the summary also show graphically how suitable the au pair is to taking care of children. The bar graph will presenther personal traits suitability scorecompared to the general population (above average, average or below average).
The second part of the report details the score for each risk factor and the third part presents the score for each personality trait assessed, so that parents can identify how well the au pair is scoring on the different personality traits.
Altogether, the report provides parents with a detailed insight into the au pair’s personality traits, and clear indications about possible risks in hiring her.
Edina: I think your report is excellent, easy to read, informative and highly useful for parents who are hiring au pairs over the phone, sight unseen and if they are uncertain about a particular au pair they have in mind. For parents who want to look at a sample report, they can download one here easily. One shows a "postive" report, the other shows red flags:
Download sample positive report
Download sample negative report
Two New Test Improvements
Yossi, there are two new improvements in your test regarding languages. Would you tell us about these new changes and how they can benefit host parents?
Pinkas: Because our NannyTest is timed, it requires the applicant to read the test language fluently. We initially launched the test in English only, but in the past few months, and based on market demand, we have added Spanish and Portuguese. Parents interviewing Spanish-speaking au pairs and au pairs from Brazil (who speak Portuguese) can use NannyTest with confidence. We will support more languages in the near future, to allow as many host parents to benefit from the NannyTest as possible.
Edina: This is great news – the largest au pair population in demand by American host parents includes both Spanish speaking au pairs and Brazilian au pairs.
I have a background in psychology and therefore I am very familiar with psychometric tests – and as an au pair expert, I am quite familiar with the screening process au pair agencies provide. There are many weaknesses in the screening process that could be greatly improved by using your test. Because I believe so strongly in the NannyTest and in the idea of giving parents more options and education in their search for the best au pair, I provide a link to your test from the Clearinghouse home page.
I highly recommend NannyTest for any parent who wants more control over the screening process and professional confirmation that their choice is an educated one.
Aren’t our children worth it?
Yossi: Thank you and yes, of course, our children are worth it!
I really appreciate your help in helping us create awareness for NannyTest. All articles and guides on screening caregivers that I found on the web limit the discussion to interviews, reference checks and background screening, so most parents aren’t aware of the existence of additional screening tools. The reason for that is probably that such tests were not relevant to parents as they were not accessible to them, but now, with NannyTest, any parent can perform such a test on their own, easily and at a very reasonable price.
Edina: Yossi, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to the Clearinghouse and to share your insights and expertise with au pair personality testing.
We hope you will come back again to keep us updated about this critical issue, and as more exciting news develops with your NannyTest.
Yossi: Yes, I will do that! Thank you so much Edina for the opportunity to present and discuss the NannyTest to your readers.
As a father, I know what it is like to find the best person to care for my children. I went through the process and it was daunting! My three children are the most important priorities in my life, next to my wife, and my concern and love for them were the motivating factors that lead me to creating the NannyTest. I want to share the ability to take more control over the screening process with as many parents as possible.
Edina, as you say here on your invaluable and very useful host family resource, the Clearinghouse, parents need more information to make the best choices. NannyTest provides parents with the kind of information that is critical in the choosing of the person who will be responsible for the care, safety and well-being of their children. They are worth it!
Read More about the NannyTest:
Why Use TakeCare's Online Personality & Risk Assessment Test?
