What to Ask When You Interview a Caregiver

Ask for Specifics About Experience, Not General Impressions

General questions like 'do you have experience with elderly care' invite a general answer. Asking instead what specific tasks a candidate has done, transferring someone from bed to a wheelchair, managing incontinence care, preparing meals around a restricted diet, gives a much clearer picture of whether their actual experience matches what this particular person needs.

How the interview itself is structured also depends on the hiring model: agency vs registry vs direct hire changes who's already vetted the caregiver before a family ever meets them, which shifts how much of this ground the interview needs to cover. A candidate coming through a registry has typically had less independent screening than one an agency has already background-checked and trained, which means a family working with a registry or hiring directly generally needs to ask more, not less.

Worth asking directly: - Describe the last time you helped someone who had fallen or nearly fallen. What did you do? - What's your experience with two-person transfers, or do you generally work alone? - Have you prepared meals around a specific dietary restriction, like a renal or diabetic diet? - What would you do in the first ten minutes of a shift if you arrived and something seemed off?

A candidate who answers these with a specific story, not a general assurance that they're comfortable with anything, is telling a family something concrete about how they actually work.

Ask How Their Training Was Learned and Verified

Caregivers employed by certain Medicare-certified home health agencies go through federally required training and a competency evaluation before working unsupervised, under a specific regulation covering home health aide services 1Ref 1Office of the Federal Register (Code of Federal Regulations) (2025).42 CFR 484.80 — Condition of participation: Home health aide services.That aides employed by Medicare-certified home health agencies must complete federally required training and a competency evaluation, a standard that doesn't automatically apply to a privately hired caregiver.. A privately hired caregiver isn't automatically covered by that same requirement, which makes it worth asking directly: where was training completed, was it hands-on or online only, and can they demonstrate a skill rather than just describe it.

The question of caregiver vs nurse boundaries is also worth raising directly in the interview, since a candidate should be able to state clearly which tasks are within a non-medical caregiver's scope and which aren't, rather than implying they can handle anything asked of them. A candidate who claims comfort with wound care, injections, or other hands-on medical tasks that fall outside a non-medical role is either misunderstanding the job or overstating their training, and either answer is worth following up on before, not after, hiring.

Asking a candidate to briefly demonstrate a routine task, like a safe transfer using the equipment actually in the home, during the interview itself is a reasonable request. Watching a few seconds of an actual attempt reveals more than a verbal description of training completed years earlier and somewhere else.

Dementia-Specific Questions, When That's the Situation

If the person needing care has dementia, general caregiving experience isn't the same as dementia-specific experience. Federal guidance on dementia caregiving emphasizes redirecting rather than correcting confusion and keeping a consistent routine, so asking a candidate to describe how they'd respond to a specific scenario, someone insisting they need to go home when they're already home, reveals more than asking if they've 'worked with dementia' before 2Ref 2National Institute on Aging / U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2025).Tips for Caregivers and Families of People With Dementia.That federal dementia-caregiving guidance emphasizes redirection over correction and consistent routines, a basis for scenario-based interview questions..

Other useful scenario questions: how would they respond to repeated questions asked minutes apart, what would they do if the person became agitated during a bath, and how do they keep a consistent routine across different shifts if more than one caregiver is involved. A candidate's answers here say more about fit than any resume line about years of experience.

That guidance also reflects how demanding dementia caregiving tends to be over time: a large share of dementia caregivers stay in the role for four years or more 3Ref 3Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2024).Caregivers of a Person with Alzheimer's Disease or a Related Dementia.That a large share of dementia caregivers provide care for four or more years, supporting questions about a candidate's experience with long-term caregiving., which is worth keeping in mind when asking a candidate about their own experience with the ups and downs of a long-term caregiving relationship, not just a single good day.

Questions About Availability, Backup, and Reliability

Logistics questions prevent the most common source of friction later: ask directly about their other commitments, how much notice they'd give for a planned absence, and what they'd do if they woke up sick on a scheduled day. A candidate who has a clear, honest answer to what happens if they can't make it is telling you something useful about how they'll handle caregiver no-shows long before it becomes a problem.

It's also worth asking whether they have any relationships with other caregivers who could step in as a one-time backup, since a candidate who has already thought about coverage, even informally, tends to handle an unplanned gap more calmly than one who hasn't considered the question until it happens.

A paid trial shift before hiring a caregiver, letting a strong candidate work a single shift under a small, clearly paid arrangement, often reveals more about reliability and fit than any interview answer, since it shows how they actually handle the routine rather than how they describe handling it.

Legal and Payroll Questions Worth Asking Upfront

Money questions belong in the interview, not after the first paycheck. Ask directly whether the candidate expects to be paid as a household employee or as a contractor, since a caregiver paid cash wages above the Social Security Administration's threshold generally counts as a household employee with tax obligations for both sides, not a contractor a family can simply issue a 1099 to 4Ref 4Social Security Administration (2026).Household Workers (SSA Publication No. 05-10021).That a caregiver paid cash wages above the SSA's annual threshold is a household employee with tax obligations, not a contractor..

It's also worth confirming a shared understanding of how hours and reporting will work, since the IRS's summary of household-employee tax duties covers Social Security, Medicare, and Schedule H reporting that both the family and the caregiver should expect to be part of the arrangement from the start, and it's worth putting the agreed terms in writing once decided rather than relying on memory of the conversation.

Worth asking directly: how they've been paid in past caregiving jobs, whether they've had taxes withheld before, and whether they have a preference between direct deposit and a paper check. A candidate who has done this correctly before, on either side of the arrangement, tends to make the conversation easier than one who has only ever been paid informally in cash.

Questions That Reveal a Scam Before It Costs You

Not every caregiving interview is with a real candidate. The FTC warns that caregiving-job scams often involve a candidate who avoids meeting in person, asks to be paid before starting, or sends a check for more than the agreed amount and asks for the difference back, all of which are reasons to end the process, not proceed with it 5Ref 5Federal Trade Commission (2024).Is it a caregiving job or a scam?.That caregiving-job scams commonly involve refusal to meet in person, requests for advance payment, or fake overpayment checks..

A legitimate candidate should have no issue meeting in person, providing verifiable references, and discussing payment through normal channels; resistance to any of that is itself an answer worth listening to. A candidate who pressures a family to skip the interview entirely, or to hire on the spot without references, is asking for exactly the shortcuts that make a scam or a bad hire harder to catch.