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How to Choose the Right Host Family and Au Pair pictures?
To choose the right picture for your profile as a Host Family or an Au Pair, there are a few points that you should keep in mind.
Upload pictures that are friendly and create a welcoming impression; describe yourself and your lifestyle, and are of good quality. If you are a Host Family, you should share family pictures and include photos of your future Au Pair’s room. If you are an Au Pair, you can include pictures of you working, especially in childcare, or doing activities that you could easily replicate with your future host kids.
Click here for more tips.
Remember: your profile picture is the most important part of your profile. Don’t forget that childcare and cultural exchange are the two key focus points of this experience.
Avoid posting sexy or sensual pictures, party photos and duck faces, pictures that don’t belong to you. Learn more.
Why your profile picture matters
Your photos are one of the first things Host Families or Au Pairs will notice on AuPair.com. A friendly, clear picture can immediately make your profile stand out. In fact,
profiles with good-quality pictures are shown more often in search results and are far more likely to get messages.
In this post, you will find some useful tips that will help you to select and upload better pictures for your profile.
How to choose a suitable picture
The content of your picture says a lot about you. Choose images that show your personality, lifestyle, and interests in a natural, friendly way.
For Host Families
Add pictures of the place where you live, your family and your children to create a welcoming impression. If you don’t want to upload pictures of your children to the internet, add at least a picture of the parents and the surroundings. You can also add a picture of the future Au Pair room and some pictures of your family's hobbies. This will help the Au Pair to better understand what his/her life will be like during the Au Pair experience abroad.
For Au Pairs
It will be a good idea to add pictures with kids – small siblings, cousins or even of your experience in a camp. Try to avoid pictures from parties, selfies and any photos that look sexy. Remember that Host Families are looking for a trustworthy and reliable person who can take care of their kids.
While uploading the pictures, consider the right of publicity. If you would like to upload a picture of you playing with the neighbours’ kids, ask the parents’ permission first.
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Don’t upload pictures from Google or social media that don’t belong to you. This is both illegal and might create a suspicious impression. The main goal of the picture is to share a part of your personality.
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Don’t insert your contact data or social media handles in your picture.
Quality
One of the main factors that influence picture quality is light. Natural light always works the best. If you are taking pictures inside the house, try to stand in a place where the light falls directly on your face. Another important factor that influences the quality of the picture is its resolution. You can manually choose it in your phone or camera settings. Ensure that your resolution is good enough to take a clear picture.
Background
Sometimes background can spoil even the nicest click of yours. Take care of people behind you, if there are any, and of the general background, so it’s not messy or suspicious.
Editing tips
If you are taking pictures with your smartphone, the phone itself will offer you many options for editing colors and visual effects. If you have some pictures stored in your laptop that require editing, here are some simple programs to use for photo editing. From online versions try Fotor, Pixlr or BeFunky. They are all free and relatively simple to use. You can add brightness, contrast and some effects to your pictures in these programs. If you like photography and would like to learn some advanced editing, look for
Lightroom. They have an
app as well.
Another important setting is the size of the picture. Ensure that your photo matches the web standards: not higher than 1200 px, and not bigger than 1.5 MB in size. You can resize your picture online using
Tiny PNG.
Uploading pictures
Once you are ready with the pictures, upload them to your profile on AuPair.com. Don’t forget to add a small description - what the picture is about or who is in it. If you would like to change the main photo, assign the number for your picture. The smallest will be the profile picture. For example:
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0 – profile picture
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1 – second picture
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2 – third picture
We suggest that both the Au Pair and the Host Family to upload at least 2-3 pictures to the profile. You can also improve your profile by writing a nice
letter to the Host Family and creating a
video.
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