There is no degree requirement. It can pay as much as $15 an hour and often compensates for gas usage. Best of all, it gives high school and college students the opportunity to pick and choose their own hours. For some, it may be the perfect job.

Baby-sitting isn’t new, but a multitude of factors are leaving parents wishing they knew where to find baby sitters and students wondering how they can get a job.

Jill Middleman is one of those searching parents. She has tried a variety of ways to find baby sitters. Along with hanging flyers at Baylor University’s School of Nursing, she has placed ads in The Daily Campus and used students recommended by her friend Jayne Suhler, a journalism lecturer at SMU.

After both positive and negative experiences with baby sitters, Middleman is once again looking for someone to watch her four children. She employs a full-time nanny for her youngest, but is in need of additional help.

“I had a baby sitter for a whole semester, but it’s difficult to find someone reliable,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easier to use someone a little bit older, who doesn’t have the turmoil of college in their lives.”

Middleman is not alone in her pursuit of child care. In addition to calling on friends, placing ads and using neighborhood lists, parents are utilizing social networking events and online groups to make the search a little less frustrating.

“Using child care is very much a part of mainstream culture,” Dr. Carol Hagen, director of the Child Development Laboratory at the University of North Texas, said. “Research shows how many mothers are working outside of the home. It is an absolute necessity for parents who both have to work.”

MommyMixer, a company started in Austin in 2003, is one of the options available to families in need of baby-sitting contacts. Its basic concept is to bring together college students and parents for meet-and-greet sessions at local stores and coffee shops.

“The days of finding tons of high school students that are just dying to help out on a Friday night are almost a thing of the past,” Kathleen Lucente, director of Marketing and Communications for MommyMixer, said in an e-mail interview. “Students today have so many activities and pressures that their hours are spoken for and so we aren’t seeing the large pool of high school sitters that our parents may have had access to back in the day.”

Arriving in Dallas in 2004, MommyMixer focuses on matching local college students, including SMU students, with parents who have a variety of child-care needs. Their unique approach invites the potential baby sitters and interested parents to an evening not too unlike speed dating in its format.

In Texas, MommyMixer also hosts events in Austin, Forth Worth, Houston, Lubbock, San Antonio, Waco, Georgetown and Greenville. Local college students are hired as campus representatives in each city. They help MommyMixer recruit baby sitters and act as hostesses at the networking events. Recruiting for the Dallas and Denton mixers is done at SMU, the University of North Texas and the University of Texas at Dallas.

The students submit their baby-sitting resumes prior to the event, including previous baby-sitting experience, references, special interests and work availability. Free for them to attend, students who can’t come to the mixer can still send their resume in for inclusion in “The Babysitter Book.” There is no limit to the number of baby sitters welcome at each mixer.

Parents sign up online at mommymixer.com and pay a registration fee. It costs $100 for first-time attendees and $75 for returning families. Registration is limited to 20 parents and frequently closes quickly. Upon their arrival at the mixer, parents receive “The Babysitter Book,” a compilation of all the submitted baby-sitting resumes. There’s no sharing allowed and attendees must sign a disclaimer promising they won’t share the book’s contents.

Students and parents both spend time introducing themselves to the group at the mixer. The baby sitters give quick descriptions of their experience and availability, while the parents are encouraged to take notes on the students they want to talk to later on.

“Our mixers have the modern day efficiency of an hour and half event combined with the good old fashioned value found in face-to-face networking,” Lucente said. “Meeting 20 moms would otherwise take 20 hours.”

MommyMixer is currently in 22 cities and will be in 30 by February 2008. The next Dallas mixer is scheduled for Nov. 6 at Elements Clothing on Lovers Lane.

If the speed at which the mixers fill up is any indication of MommyMixer’s success, they’re growing quickly. As of Oct. 11, the November mixer was already closed to parents. According to the MommyMixer Web site, Austin mixers have a history of filling up within three days of being posted.

“Today families are moving to new towns frequently, they often have heavy work schedules and they want to have their kids connecting with bright, energetic sitters that are a great influence on them,” said Lucente. “MommyMixer makes those connections possible.”

Students also find themselves searching for jobs that will fit around their class schedules and responsibilities. The flexibility of baby-sitting combined with its competitive pay often makes it an easy choice.

SMU senior Sara Stringfellow started baby-sitting regularly for one local family as a first year. Soon that woman had passed her name on to five friends and they had passed it on to five more. Unable to handle all of the calls, Stringfellow decided to start SMU Sitters.

“There just isn’t really a good way to find reputable sitters,” Stringfellow said. “You have to be in the loop, but it’s hard to find the loop.”

Using the convenience of Facebook, she started a group and 60 girls joined overnight. She regularly gives her e-mail address to moms looking for help and they e-mail her with job specifics. Stringfellow then sends a Facebook message to the group, giving the members a chance to contact parents and arrange jobs.

“It’s grown on its own and is mostly my friends or friends of friends,” said Stringfellow. “All of the girls in the group are someone that I know or are one removed from me.”

Parents frequently struggle with hiring sitters who are total strangers, she said, and SMU Sitters helps because she can vouch for the members of the group. According to Stringfellow, group members can expect to find jobs that pay an average of $15 an hour.

“I’m happy to pay as much as I need to,” Middleman said. “I can tell the people who really need the money and those who may not. The people who need it are going to be more likely to show up consistently.”

While families look high and low for reliable baby sitters, students benefit from relationships with local families who are willing to pay for their time. Using organizations like MommyMixer and SMU Sitters, parents utilize the Internet and fulfill their desire to personally connect with potential babysitters.

“I have had both successful and not successful experiences with SMU students,” Middleman said. “I’m just looking for someone who is experienced, responsible and intelligent.”