How do HO evaluate house/pet sitting experience? Number of sits? Or number of days sitting?

I’m curious to see what weighting homeowners give to number of days in a housesitter’s resume, versus the number of house sits.

We prefer long term, so we have a low number of total number of sits.
We have 10 sits, totaling 300 days over 5 years, (ALL FIVE STAR ratings) whereas other house/pet sitters may have 30 weekend sits, totaling 90 days over the same period.

We always state that the number of days total over the last 5 years on our application.

So, what do owners think?

We are also sitters that do longer sits wherever possible.
Personally, I would think number of sits is more important than the number of days as this shows sitters have experience with a wider variety of pets in a wider variety of different environments. Having said that I think when home owners are looking for good reviews, once you have 3 or more they can tell you are a good, reliable sitter. So having 5, 5 star reviews is as good as having 50.

4 Likes

I tend to agree. And from there, I would think the written reviews are the most important.

2 Likes

To me, knowing that the review system has quite some flaws, I do read the reviews and it’s good to see when there are return sits, because nobody would invite sitters back if something went completely wrong, but there are also other things, which speak in favor of people without any reviews yet.

The couple I just confirmed don’t have any reviews yet, but they are homeowners themselves and next to them knowing what it is like to trust the house and pets to complete strangers, I had the chance to see parts of their home during our video chat.
Nobody can fake a nicely furnished and beautifully decorated living and kitchen area just by tidying up for a video call. This told me that they are responsible and clean people. This is more important than multiple 5-star reviews, some of which might not have been completely truthful.

So all in all the number of reviews isn’t really important to me. However what is important to me, are no lesser than 5-star ratings, because I know that giving less than 5 is unusual. As it is never possible to hear both sides for “bad” reviews, I rather stick to either none at all and let my gut decide or to 5-star only (and I let my gut decide :rofl:), but I don’t care if it’s 15 or 50. You can’t get better than best, can you?

2 Likes