Guide To Hiring A Maid In Singapore – Hiring a maid can undoubtedly lighten your workload and help you maintain a clean home. Not only that, it can allow you to focus on your career and family. However, when trying to hire a maid in Singapore, you need to follow a few specific steps.
If you haven’t hired one before, it is difficult to understand what you should do first. To help you with the same, we will share a guide for hiring maids in Singapore. Once you follow these handfuls of steps, it will become effortless for you to hire the right maid. Read on – Guide To Hiring A Maid In Singapore
Guide To Hiring A Maid In Singapore –
1. Be aware of the guideline of MOM:
The Ministry of Manpower in Singapore has certain guidelines to abide by before you employ a maid. These guidelines are a must for every employer. These include:
- You should be 21-year-old or higher.
- You shouldn’t have the title of undischarged bankrupt.
- You should have the mental capacity to handle the responsibilities which come after you turn employer.
- You should have the financial capacity to hire the maid and look after the upkeep of the worker in acceptable accommodation conditions.
- You have to attend the employer’s orientation program before you hire a maid.
As long as you abide by these few guidelines, you can start looking for a maid in Singapore.
Guide To Hiring A Maid In Singapore –
2. Curate the candidates:
Once you abide by these guidelines, now is the time to search for the maid and curate among the candidates you come across.
Wondering how to find the right candidates? There are a few ways in which you can do so.
Word of mouth:
The very 1st way to do so is to search for suitable candidates through word of mouth. You can speak with your relatives, friends, neighbors as well as colleagues. They would have surely hired a domestic worker in the past.
Since you can get first-hand feedback from them, the candidates you will get will be better than the candidates you can find through any other source.
Not only that, you won’t have to do extensive curation of such candidates either. That is why it is one of the best ways to find a suitable maid for the candidates in Singapore.
Online:
You can use online websites to find maids who are looking for a new job. There are quite a few online directories as well.
These directories allow you to filter the candidates with the help of filters like:
- Salary expected
- Nationality
- Work experience
- Age
- Work permit expiration
- And so on
So, you will be able to curate these candidates through the online sites themselves.
You have to look at the visa status of the maids before shortlisting the candidates. Only then will you be able to understand whether the maid can work in Singapore or not.
If you do not want to do all of this research, there is another alternative.
Agency:
You can simply hire a maid sourcing agency in Singapore. The advantage of hiring such agencies is that they will handle everything for you. You need not worry about curating the candidates or looking after the documents.
Thus, in these three ways, you will be able to find the right candidates and go through their profiles.
3. Check maid eligibility:
If the candidate you have shortlisted has worked in Singapore previously or is a transfer maid, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you need to follow this step.
You have to refer to the Ministry of Manpower‘s maid eligibility requirement to further filter out the candidates.
According to this requirement, the maid can be between 23 and 50 years of age and should be a female.
The ministry also states that maids from Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other South Asian countries are approved. They shouldn’t be related to you in any way.
There are a few other such requirements as well which make a maid eligible.
Before you start interviewing the maids, it is a good idea to check their qualifications concerning these eligibility requirements so that you can know right away whether the maid can work in Singapore or not.
4. Conduct interviews:
After the maid candidates meet the guidelines of the Ministry of Manpower, it is a good idea to conduct interviews. You can do so online quite easily.
The online face-to-face interviews will help you understand whether the maids are good enough with their communication skills or not. Only when they can understand your requirements can you hire them.
In case you’re hiring a maid who is already working in Singapore, you can conduct face-to-face interviews as well.
During the interview, you have to ask them about:
- Work history
- Personal status
- Religion
- Plan
- 1st aid training
- Daily routine
- Skills which they have
- Whether they have managed pets in the past?
- Food preferences
- And so on
Only when you inquire about all this from them will you find the right maid candidate.
5. Get the necessary documents:
Once you have shortlisted the right candidate, now is the time to get the necessary documents from them.
In the case of a transfer maid, you have to find out about the work permit’s expiration date. If the expiration date is close by, it is a good idea to ask the maid to apply for a new work permit before you hire her.
Only after the approval can you hire the maid.
In the case of new maids, they will have to apply for a fresh work permit which can allow them to work for two years. They can do so through the Ministry of Manpower’s website.
After that, you can arrange for the maid to travel to Singapore and attend the settling-in program. Once they finish that, they will have to pass through the pre-employment medical examination before the work permit is issued.
6. Don’t ignore the security bond or insurance:
When you’re bringing in a maid into the country, you will have to pay a deposit as a security bond with the Ministry of Manpower.
As an employer, only you will have to pay for this. The bond money will be refunded when the domestic worker has canceled the work permit and there is no breach of contract.
Guide To Hiring A Maid In Singapore – Conclusion
Thus, if you’re hiring a maid in Singapore, these are the six steps that you need to follow. Once you do so, it will become easier for you to hire a transfer maid or bring a new one into the country.
If you think that this is a cumbersome task, you can always hire an agency to find you a maid. That way, you will not have to take up any additional work, and you can focus on your family and career and get a maid easily.