How to Put Babysitting on a Resume [+Examples]

You’re getting ready to send out your resume to try to snag your first job at a company.

But looking at your resume, you start to worry that your experience section is looking a little bare. 

You have some experience babysitting, but that’s not actually work experience, is it? Does it even matter?

It does and if you add correctly, it can really boost your resume.

We’re here to show you how to do exactly that.

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Babysitting on a Resume

It’s easy to think that babysitting isn’t a “real job”, but there are few things further from the truth. The name might make it seem insignificant, but after all, you’re a child care provider and that’s something.

Babysitting involves a variety of different skills and personality traits as well as responsibilities. The whole trick is to boil down your babysitting experience to the core duties and skills and then demonstrate them in a way that’s relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Let’s start off with the best place to put your babysitting experience when writing your resume—your work experience section.

Create a Work Experience Section

Why work experience? Unless babysitting is just a hobby of yours, you want to show the employer that you’re a professional and take your tasks seriously. This holds true whether you're writing a resume with no experience or writing a resume for internship. So:

• Add “Babysitter” as your job title.
• Enter the city and state where you were babysitting
• Add the dates that you were babysitting for. They don’t have to be exact, month/year is fine.
• Include your babysitting responsibilities. 

Take your babysitting experience and lump it together. Adding each family that you babysat for would make a really long, unnecessary list. It’s enough to put it all together and focus on the time frame instead.

Now that you know where to put your babysitting experience, it’s time to dig deeper into what exactly you should include to make your resume stand out like a squeaky clean 2-year-old.

Read more: Including Work Experience in a Resume

List Up to Six Responsibilities

Employers aren’t going to want a long shopping list of what you did with the kids. Instead, pick up to 6 responsibilities that were the main backbone of your job and that can prove you’re a professional.

Pay attention to using action verbs when talking about your experience and responsibilities. Replace everyday verbs like “did” or “made” with “maintained” and “created”. Action verbs really make your responsibilities pop.

Babysitting on a Resume Example

This babysitter was really involved in the day-to-day taking care of the children. The responsibilities mentioned here show a capacity for care and support, and they are great skills for sectors such as healthcare and providing care.

Here’s an example of a babysitter who is less involved in cooking and bathing children:

Babysitting on a Resume Sample

You can see that this babysitter was more involved in teaching children soft skills and being supportive. These are important skills for sectors like teaching or customer service.

Read more: 45 Best Resume Tips & Tricks

When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.

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Add Achievements

Everyday job duties are all well and good, but a spoonful of achievements will help your resume go down a lot better.

Achievements prove extra qualities about you like going the extra mile and being proactive, all of which are super hot traits on the job market right now.

Think about a key, professional achievement, label it “key achievement”, and add it to the end of your list of job responsibilities.

Here’s an example:

It’s guaranteed to make your experience pop. 

Read more: What to Put on a Resume

Tailor to the Job Description

You still need to tailor your resume to make your work experience really stand out and catch the hiring manager’s eye. One of the greatest tricks is using the job ad as a cheat sheet. Use the resume keywords in the ad and include them in your resume where appropriate. It lets you focus on what the recruiter is most interested in. It has an added bonus of making your resume more ATS friendly which is just as important as getting the kids to bed on time.

So how do you make your babysitting experience relate to the job ad?

Here’s how:

Let’s say you have a daycare center teacher’s aide job ad that wants:

A self-motivating, creative, flexible and hardworking individual who has a passion for working with children and a great attitude. The aide's main responsibility is assisting a classroom teacher in the general supervision and management of the children.

Highlight the skills in the ad that you have and can prove, like in the above example.

Then mention those key skills in the work experience section of your resume through examples:

Babysitting on a Resume Template

As you can see, this resume work experience section not only caters to what the job ad is looking for, but also uses the listed skills in the responsibilities. This is also a great example of mentioning achievements on your resume which is always a good idea.

That resume is getting an A+!

List References

How do you list references on your resume? Add them at the end of your document. Include the name and phone number or email address of the parents you babysat for. Remember to always ask for permission and which contact details your references are comfortable sharing.

Read more: How to Structure a Resume Professionally

Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

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Key Takeaway

Babysitting, if added correctly to your resume, can really activate your resume better than too much sugar.

Remember to:

• Group together different families you’ve worked with when listing your babysitting experience.
• Use active verbs to list your responsibilities in a more compelling way.
• Use the job ad as a cheat sheet to know what skills and experience the employer is looking for.

That’s it!

Thanks for reading! Have any questions regarding how to put babysitting on a resume? Let us know down in the comments!