What You Are Signing

The paperwork is part of the profession

Before most private roles start, and often before the working trial, there is paper: a confidentiality agreement, sometimes a trial agreement, then the employment terms. None of it should surprise you, and none of it should be signed unread. A note before anything else: this guide describes what these documents typically contain so you can read yours intelligently. It is not legal advice, and for anything unclear, an hour of a lawyer's time is the cheapest insurance in your career.

The NDA, and why it is broader than any you have signed

A household confidentiality agreement is not a corporate NDA with the names changed. Corporate NDAs protect business information; a household NDA protects a private life, and this site's guide for the families drafting them spells out what a well-drafted one covers. Expect provisions on the family's personal and health information, schedules and relationships, financial circumstances, property layouts and security details, and who visits the house. Expect the definition of confidential information to be broad, with no requirement that something be labeled confidential to be protected. And expect the security-related provisions to survive the job: property and access information stays confidential indefinitely, including after you leave.

None of that is a red flag. It is the standard of a household that takes its privacy seriously, and it protects you too, because a house with clear rules is a house where nobody has to guess what can be said. Read every clause; a signature you can explain is worth more than a fast one.

The trial, on paper

For chef, house manager, and nanny seats, a paid working trial of days to a few weeks before the permanent offer is standard, and the confidentiality agreement is signed before the trial, not after the hire. The words that matter there are paid and before. A household that proposes an unpaid trial, or wants you working before anything is signed, is telling you how it runs. Reasonable trial terms say what the trial covers, what it pays, how long it lasts, and what both sides owe if it ends there.

The terms worth reading twice

• Scope. The clearest thing on the page should be what the seat owns. If the duties are a vague paragraph, ask for better; you are pricing scope, as Reading a Private Offer lays out.
• Hours and on-call. Written expectations beat remembered conversations, especially in live-in roles where the line between on and off lives in this clause.
• Notice and exit. What both sides owe on the way out, including any garden-leave style provisions, and what happens to housing when a live-in role ends. The time to understand the exit is at the entrance.
• Restrictions after the job. Some agreements restrict soliciting household staff or working for connected parties for a period. Understand the reach before signing rather than testing it after.

What protects you

The same paper that protects the family should protect you: terms in writing, pay and review dates stated, the trial paid, the housing terms explicit. A family that documents well is usually a family that employs well, and the reverse is also signal. The vetting you go through before this paper appears is mapped in What a Family Asks Before It Decides, and once the ink is dry, the first months have their own craft: Your First 90 Days in a Private Role.