Domestic Couple Teams
At Massey’s Agency we have been successfully recruiting domestic couple teams for over 160 years. Good working relationships rarely happen by chance. They are more likely to be the result of considerable effort. We want our candidates to stay in their jobs a good many years and we approach every enquiry with that in mind. Years of experience in this industry have taught us that successful placements come from listening to our clients and concentrating on meeting their needs. To broadly explain the process:
Domestic couple positions generally fall into two categories.
In the first group, both members of the team carry out the majority of their work within the house and their duties may include any of the following: house manager, butler (including silver service waiting), valet, houseman, caretaker, family chauffeur, handyman, head housekeeper, housekeeper, cook, nanny. These positions are generally found in London or in the more formal country households.
The second group comprises those positions where one member of the team spends a good deal of time outside the house - gardening (including major landscaping projects), household maintenance and family driving - as well as helping in the house with heavier tasks from time to time. The second member of the team may provide any combination of cooking, nannying and housekeeping. These positions are normally based in rural areas and, often, both members of the team will have had a helpful background on shooting estates.
We find that staff generally fall quite naturally into one or the other of these two categories and that enables us to canvass only those couples who will be a suitable ‘fit’.
This, of course, is not the whole story, as many households simply do not fit comfortably into either of these groups. Some may require one member of the team to be a qualified chef, while others might seek specialist skills such as forestry management or a background in security. We give individual attention to each and every request for staff. Whatever the nature of the household, we pride ourselves on providing couple teams equipped to give a service tailor-made to the employer’s needs.
While some of our domestic couples have spent the entirety of their working lives in the domestic sector, many more will have come from other environments - military, police, commercial, industrial, hospitality - bringing with them a body of life knowledge, a host of relevant practical skills and a strong work ethic. As we tell all our candidates, practical skills are only the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to working in the domestic sector. It is our job to make certain that staff are suited to working in private households and, to that end, we require all our couple teams to have a minimum of four years’ experience in a private household.
All staff are personally interviewed at length by our experienced recruitment consultants and their recent references independently checked (the vast majority by telephone). We investigate the level and breadth of their skills, examine their qualifications and, in the case of gardeners and chefs, view photographs of their work.
Salary levels vary widely, depending on the level of responsibility, amount of foreign travel involved, hours worked and skills required. It is our practice to maintain a watching brief on current market rates so that we are in a position to advise employers in the initial stages of the recruitment process. In order not to inflate salaries, Masseys endeavours to elicit from the candidates their expectations rather than concentrating on the figures given to us by clients.
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Having discussed, in detail, our clients’ requirements and established a job description and couple profile, we search our extensive database. We aim to send CVs within hours of receiving an enquiry. However, as we are looking for, not one but two “special people” with a particular combination of skills (and not always the most logical combination, at that) plus the ability to fit comfortably within an established household, it sometimes takes a little longer. 'Chemistry' plays its own significant part in reaching a successful outcome and our overall aim is to provide people who will complement the household in which they are placed, both in terms of their temperament and their skills.
If, despite all our efforts, we do not find the right couple, we will say so rather than wasting employers’ valuable time by sending inappropriate candidates.
We at Massey’s Agency have the expertise and the candidates to meet your staffing needs and we look forward to working with you.
Massey's Agency
Telephone - (+44) 020 3033 0000
E-mail - mail@MasseysAgency.co.uk
Website - www.MasseysAgency.co.uk