In ultra high net worth staffing, a standard approach doesn’t work. When you place a professional into the private environment of a home, the stakes run higher than a typical corporate hire.
This person enters your family’s daily life. They see your children’s routines, know your schedule, handle your possessions, move through your private spaces. A poor hiring decision doesn’t just affect productivity. It disrupts the sanctuary of your home.
That’s why Morgan & Mallet moved away from off-the-shelf software to build a proprietary Applicant Tracking System designed for private service.
Why We Built Our Own
Standard recruitment software is designed for offices, focusing on keywords and technical skills. Our custom system tracks the details that actually make a household run smoothly.
In the early years, we built candidate folders manually on individual laptops, hand-typing information into Word documents, formatting CVs from scratch, storing references in personal files where mistakes crept in and information couldn’t be shared between recruiters.
We tried Bullhorn, a platform designed for enterprise sales departments, and JobAdder, which packed everything into a single scrolling page with UK-centric location fields.
Neither could filter for what mattered: live-in availability, domestic couples, pet allergies, willingness to travel with principals.
In 2020, we made the decision to build our own. It’s been a significant investment. The system evolves constantly as our business grows. But it transformed how we work.
What Makes It Different
The Filters That Matter
Our system tracks HNW and UHNW household-specific requirements that generic platforms ignore.
Household-specific details: We have a filter for pet allergies, children, accommodation for couples, languages and a driver’s license.
For clients: eliminates candidates who physically can’t perform the role. If you have four dogs, you won’t receive profiles of candidates with severe pet allergies. Shortlists arrive pre-filtered for practical fit.
Soft skills and behavioral observations: Fields exist for discretion level, mindset under pressure, cultural fit, communication style during the interview.
For clients: moves beyond technical qualifications to behaviors that determine whether staff integrate successfully into private households. A housekeeper who stays calm during last-minute dinner parties gets that documented and matched to homes where that trait matters.
From Interview to Placement: How Recruiters Use the System Daily
The Long Form Interview
When a candidate applies, a recruiter conducts a thorough interview, often around 90 minutes. This isn’t a brief phone screen.
During that conversation, technical skills get verified. A housekeeper applying for luxury roles will be asked to name appropriate cleaning products for specific materials. Can they identify the correct method for Carrara marble versus honed limestone?
Do they know which products damage antique wood?
Capturing the Full Picture
Notes get entered in real time, then situational responses are recorded. Personal circumstances are logged: family status, location preferences, salary expectations.
Often candidates undersell their own experience. A housekeeper might mention during conversation that they also handled vendor payments and maintained household inventory. That’s estate management experience. It gets documented. Suddenly they’re eligible for higher-level roles they hadn’t considered.
Standardized CVs
The system generates professional, standardized Morgan & Mallet profiles for every candidate. Clients don’t receive a messy pile of varied formats.
Before the ATS, recruiters spent hours reformatting each CV manually, adding photos, rewriting job descriptions to highlight relevant details, but now the system pulls interview data and produces a uniform profile automatically.
Reference Checks and Documentation
Reference checks get tracked in the system. Criminal record status is visible. Documents are stored: ID, work certificates, P45/P60.
Sometimes candidates request we don’t contact references immediately, particularly with high-profile employers. The system flags “cannot contact” and the reference check moves to later in the process.
The Global Database Advantage
200,000+ Registered Candidates Worldwide
Our database holds over 200,000 candidates registered since 2015, and over 50,300 of them are vetted. Getting vetted is selective: roughly 25% of applications make it through. How we count.
Eight Offices, One System
Once a candidate is in our system, they’re visible to recruiters in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Paris, Switzerland, Antibes and Dubai.
Laurine Mallet, co-founder of Morgan & Mallet, explains why every office sees the same profiles:
“Our client[s] are international, but our candidate[s] also: you have a lot of traveling butler[s], traveling nannies. They can work in France, and let’s say next time it will be on a [yacht] based in [the Bahamas].”
Real-Time Updates and Complex Filtering
Information updates instantly. When a candidate earns a new certification, changes their availability, or updates salary expectations, every office sees it immediately.
The system handles multi-variable searches that would be nearly impossible manually. Need someone who speaks English and French, holds a driving license, has no pet allergies, and is willing to live-in?
The filters narrow our 50,300+ vetted candidates to a targeted shortlist in seconds.
Maintaining Standards as We Grow
As the company has expanded internationally, we’ve built compliance into the system itself. Eric Rios, one of our senior team members, now manages quality control for the ATS.
He checks a sample of candidate profiles every month and checks every placement to ensure folders contain all required elements: references contacted, criminal record completed, necessary certifications uploaded.
Learning from Every Placement
The system improves continuously based on difficult cases. When a new scenario appears (a remote island placement, a specific allergy requirement, a rare certification needed), we add filters to track it.
After 11 years of placements, the database reflects thousands of real-world scenarios.
The Three-Month Guarantee
Morgan & Mallet offers a three-month guarantee on placements. If a placement fails during that period, the company provides a replacement at no additional fee.
That guarantee requires regular follow-up. Recruiters check in at 10 days, then periodically throughout the first three months. Currently managed through the CRM, the next development phase will make these checkpoints mandatory within the system.
What’s Coming Next
Next on the list:
- Automatic resume translation for international clients (French principals reviewing English CVs, Dubai families reading French applications)
- Audio-to-text interview notes capturing recruiter impressions immediately after interviews while observations are fresh
- Video training modules for new recruiters, allowing them to learn at their own pace across time zones rather than requiring live training sessions
What It Means for You
Private household staffing needs specialized tools. We built our system because nothing else worked.
The result is faster placements, better documentation, and consistent quality across eight international offices.
Interested in working with Morgan & Mallet? Clients can reach our team through our offices in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Paris, Switzerland, Antibes and Dubai.
Candidates can register through our website to begin the vetting process and gain access to our international placement network. See how we recruit, step by step.
