Hiring a helper is not buying a service. You are bringing another adult into your home, around your children, your elderly parents, your private life. The decision deserves more than a Google search and a phone call to the first agency that picks up.
After more than 4,000 placements across 11 years, here are the five questions we wish more employers asked us, and our honest answers.
How many helpers will you actually shortlist for me, and how quickly?
This is the question that decides whether you wait six weeks or six days. The industry default is two or three biodatas spread over a week or two, with long silences between them. We send five biodatas in one working day, drawn from a pool of 300+ helper profiles available at any time. And if those first five do not feel right, we send more. The same day if we can. The right helper is not always in the first batch, and we do not pretend she is.
The reason most agencies move slowly is not strategy. It is that they cannot see what is in their own database. The reason we move quickly is that we have spent a decade building tools so our consultants do not waste a single hour searching when they should be matching.
If an agency cannot tell you exactly how many shortlists you will get in your first week, and whether they will keep going if the first round misses, you have a problem.
What do you actually do before a replacement becomes the answer?
The conversation everyone wants to have is about replacement periods. We do offer twelve months. But that is the conversation we would rather avoid having with you at all.
The real work of a good agency is making sure replacement is never the first answer. When something is not working between an employer and a helper, our team sits with both sides. We offer structured counselling for the helper, regular check-ins for the employer, and a consultant who already knows the full context of the placement. Most situations that look like a replacement on the surface are actually a communication gap, a cultural adjustment, or a training need that resolves with a single conversation.
Replacement is a safety net. Retention is the goal.
Our retention rate runs high, above the median of agencies in our size bracket on the MOM eaDirectory. That number is the one we actually pay attention to. An agency that quotes you a long replacement period without telling you how they prevent replacements in the first place is selling you the wrong product.
What support do I get after the helper is placed?
Most agencies hand over the helper, send the work permit, and disappear. Phone calls go unanswered. WhatsApp messages get read receipts but no reply. Three months later, you are alone with a situation you do not know how to handle, and the only option you have is to start over.
Our consultants are still picking up your WhatsApp messages two years after placement. Not because we are saints. Because we built our team to stay together long enough to remember you. Joyce, Iqa, and our wider team have been here since before COVID, and most of them have helped place the same family more than once. Continuity is the unsexy answer to almost every helper question.
Ask. If the answer is some version of "call us if you need us," you are buying a one-night-stand product. That is not what your home deserves.
How long has your team actually been together?
Maid agencies in Singapore have brutal staff turnover. The face that signs you up may not be the voice that picks up your call six months later. That is a problem because helper placement is fundamentally a relationship business. The consultant who knows your kitchen layout, your dad's medication routine, your daughter's school pickup window, that knowledge does not transfer. It evaporates when the consultant leaves.
When you call any agency, ask how long the consultant on the other end has worked there. Ask how long their team has been together. We are happy to tell you that some of our staff were here when we placed your friend's mother's helper in 2021. That continuity is not luck. It is design.
Where do your helpers actually come from, and how many countries do you actively work with?
This is a question almost no employer thinks to ask, and almost no agency wants you to. It matters because the country your helper comes from is not just a line on the biodata. It changes everything from the language she will speak with your parents, to the food she will instinctively know how to cook, to the way she will read your home's rhythm in the first month.
Our helpers come from five countries we work with directly:
We did not pick five because more sounds better in marketing. We built five pipelines because no single country fits every Singapore home. A family caring for a Mandarin-speaking grandparent has different needs from a family with three young children and a halal kitchen. A working mother who needs early-morning eldercare has different needs from a multi-generational household with a domestic routine to protect.
Most agencies advertise "all nationalities available" because they want to look like a one-stop shop, but the helpers they actually have ready often come from one or two pipelines they have not refreshed in years. We talk about each of our pipelines openly because we built each one separately, we visit our partner training centres ourselves, and we know what each country's training cycle actually covers. Ask any agency where their helpers come from. If they cannot tell you the names of the training centres, you do not know who you are hiring through.
Our MOM EA Licence number is 15C7448. Look us up on the MOM eaDirectory.
So how do you actually decide?
You do not need an agency to be the cheapest. You need them to still be there for you in month nine, when something unexpected happens, with the consultant who actually knows your family. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and it is the standard you have every right to demand from anyone you sign with.
Start the conversation
If you would like to start that conversation with us, our team is at unistarr.com.sg/helpers or on WhatsApp via either of our branches below.
Bukit Timah +65 9723 4920
Katong +65 9647 4781
Mon-Fri 11am-7pm · Sat-Sun 11am-5pm
Unistarr Employment Pte Ltd · MOM EA Licence 15C7448
As featured on CNA + 8world, June 2026
