Cherish Anderson uses a simple philosophy to guide her when screening nanny candidates. “If I wouldn’t let them watch my children, I won’t let them watch anybody else’s children,” she says.

It’s a maxim that has helped Anderson, a mother of three with a background in marketing, successfully place more than 100 nannies with families since launching Nanny 2 Shoes LLC from her home less than two years ago. To better handle the demands of her growing agency, she recently opened a small office in the East Village at 400 E. Locust Ave.

Anderson saw the need for a service to assist families in finding qualified nannies firsthand after searching for a nanny five years ago when her youngest child began kindergarten and needed after-school and summer care.

“At that time, the services that were in Des Moines just weren’t anything that I wanted to purchase, so I decided to do it on my own,” she said.

The International Nanny Association, a Houston-based educational non-profit membership association that promotes the profession, estimates there are about 1 million nannies working throughout the United States.

Angela Wilson, who founded American Professional Nannies in Des Moines 14 years ago, said she has seen about a half dozen nanny agencies start up in that time, only to go out of business within a year or two.

“I think competition is always good,” said Wilson, who said she hasn’t noticed any decrease in her business since Nanny 2 Shoes opened. Wilson estimated she places about 300 nannies a year.

Anderson credited her success so far in part to becoming an INA member and adopting the association’s standards. Additionally, word-of-mouth marketing helped get her business off the ground.

“I started my client base through friends,” she said. “I told all my friends what I was doing and they told their friends, and that really helped. And advertising is really priceless when you want to get that brand awareness.”

Though she focuses on connecting both full-time and part-time nannies with families in Central and Eastern Iowa, her Web site, www.nanny2shoes.com, Anderson has enabled her to place a nanny in Boston, as well as others in California and Texas, and she is currently working with a family in Hawaii. Additionally, she operates a “nannysitter” service that families use to arrange on-call nannies on an hourly basis.

In June 2004, Anderson bought the client and nanny lists of Nannies ‘N More when that Des Moines agency went out of business.

“So that reinforced what I had already built, and showed me there was a big market out there for customized child care,” she said.

The placement fees that families pay Nanny 2 Shoes are based on the experience and salary of the nanny, with a minimum fee of $150. Anderson does not charge the nannies commissions, and families pay salaries directly to the nanny and also make any benefits arrangements, such as holidays, paid time off and insurance.

Nationally, live-out nannies average a salary of $590 per week, according to a 2004 INA survey. Entry-level nannies in the Des Moines market typically earn about $300 a week, with the most experienced nannies working for large families making up to $600 a week, Anderson said.

For Tiffanie Heilman, working as a nanny has been much nicer than her brief stints in corporate America.

“There’s no office politics, and there’s no one sending snotty e-mails to me,” said Heilman, who works 40 to 50 hours per week as a full-time nanny for a family with two infants. In her five years as a nanny, Heilman has also worked in Denver, as well as a three-month stay in South Africa with a Des Moines family that relocated there.

“When I came back to Des Moines, I was not at all thrilled with the agencies I found,” she said. “Someone told me about Cherish and I was really impressed. She returned my calls right away, and she still keeps in touch with me on a regular basis.” After her initial placement, the mother left the workforce and Anderson assisted Heilman in finding her present position.

For those considering becoming a nanny, “I would say, ‘Analyze your motives for doing this,’” Heilman said. “Unless you’re fluent in baby babble – there’s not a whole lot of conversation going on. … It’s very fulfilling, but it’s definitely not for everybody.”

Heilman also recommended that families check all of the child-care references, and to use an agency to get assistance in thoroughly checking a nanny’s background.

In addition to placing full-time and part-time nannies, Nanny 2 Shoes handles temporary placements, or “nannysitters.” Families pay an annual fee of $150 per year for a membership, and then pay an agency reservation fee for each booking in addition to the $8 to $12 per hour paid directly to the nanny. A total of 113 families are currently enrolled in that service, Anderson said. Families using that service will get whoever is available, but can establish a favorites list.

“We actually have quite a few families who have moved to the area with the larger companies and they don’t have family here,” she said. “Or they’re living in a new neighborhood where none of the kids are old enough to baby-sit.”

Finding qualified nannies has been “extremely difficult,” Anderson said, which is why she’s emphasizing recruitment of nannies, and working to educate potential candidates that the field is a viable career choice for young women.

Much of the recruiting takes place online using national nanny databases, she said. “We’ve recently made contact with over 25 girls in Iowa through online resources. What we do then is screen them — really the whole process is a screening — and once they make it through that, we meet with them and walk them through an interview which is a 10-page profile. We also check their child-care references. We also do criminal, driving and child abuse background checks.”

Anderson recently held two nanny recruiting seminars locally, but those efforts did not turn up any new candidates, she said. Still, she chalks that up to the need for more education, and plans to hold quarterly recruitment sessions.

So, whom does she really represent, the families or the nannies?

“When I’m asked that, I say, ‘I work for the kids,’ she said. “It’s definitely all about the children, finding someone almost as great as their parents to watch over and guide them.”