21 Key Interview Questions to Ask Childcare Candidates (2025)

Childcare workers, also referred to as daycare workers, are generally responsible for taking care of children during traditional working hours. Their job description revolves around ensuring the children left in their care are bathed, fed and kept safe. Additionally, childcare workers teach children basic skills, organize playing activities to ensure children socialize, and explore different interests in a secure environment.

Suitable candidates for child care roles are naturally loving, patient, keen on details, and most importantly, have knowledge about child developmental stages. Employers seeking to recruit childcare workers tend to focus on candidates who possess the following qualifications and experience:

• Proven work experience as a childcare teacher/daycare worker/daycare coordinator/Early Childhood Educator (ECE) and Early Childhood Assistant.
• Certification in first aid and CPR.
• Bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.

As such, hiring managers will ask candidates specific interview questions to gain insight into their qualifications, experiences, skills, and abilities, and determine how they are relevant to the position. Unlike common interview questions, childcare worker interview questions mostly focus on candidates’ soft skills such as patience, adaptability, caring nature, problem-solving capability, among others. Situational and process-based interview questions are pervasive.

Examples of interview questions for childcare workers

1. How would you deal with a child that doesn’t want to participate in games and other activities with his/her peers?
2. What activities do you include in your daily schedule to ensure the day runs smoothly?
3. How does the day of an infant in your classroom differ from the day of a toddler in your class?
4. What is your preferred age group to work with and what types of activities would you do with them?
5. What do you enjoy most about working with children?
6. What do you find most challenging about being a childcare worker and how do you address these challenges?
7. Describe a time when you and a parent disagreed about how to react to a disobedient child. How did you handle the situation?
8. Describe an experience you had dealing with a difficult person (parent or colleague) and how did you handle the situation?
9. How would you deal with an angry or concerned parent?
10. If two children started fighting, how would you handle the situation?
11. What is your favorite activity or event that you planned for children? What reaction did you get from parents?
12. Describe a time when you successfully provided personal assistance to a colleague.
13. How do you ensure you are physically fit to perform physical activities that are required in the workplace?
14. Share an effective step-by-step process that you have used to maintain a safe play environment. Provide a relevant example.
15. Describe an experience where monitoring of children’s play activities helped you to be more effective in your work.
16. Share an experience in which you successfully operated an in-house day-care center within a business.
17. Describe an experience in which you cared for children in an institutional setting.
18. What is the state of your records for individual children? What is something you would love to improve?
19. Describe a situation when your patience was tested. How did you keep your emotions in check?
20. Describe a step by step process you use to put on a diaper for an infant or soothe a crying child or ensure toys and equipment are sanitary.
21. What cleaning duties do you expect to handle?
22. Describe a group activity at a daycare facility. How would you encourage students to work or play together? What would be the objective of the action? How would the activity end?

Tips to consider when asking childcare interview questions

• Avoid asking redundant questions that offer no insight into the candidates’ characters and abilities. When recruiting for childcare roles, consider shaking things up a bit and attempt to know or understand your candidates from both a personal and professional level to assess whether they’ll be an excellent fit for your organization.
• Ask questions which prompt candidates to elaborate on basic childcare worker interview questions to allow you the opportunity to know why they want to work in the childcare industry and to give you a glimpse into their personality, passions, and goals.
• Test their interpersonal skills. It’s no secret that majority of mistakes within daycare facilities occur due to lack of communication between the childcare workers, parents, administration or children. Therefore, to limit this avoidable situation, communication is critical — lookout for candidates who demonstrate excellent interpersonal skills and are open, since these are the necessary qualities of an active childcare worker. Additionally, excellent communication skills will come in handy when parents need reassurance that their children are in the best hands and receiving the care they need.
• Ask questions about personal growth or success. It’s no secret that no one is perfect, however, acknowledging areas that need improvement illustrates a need to grow, develop and learn, which are essential in life. Such types of questions will enable you to figure out the extent to which a candidate is willing to learn from their mistakes and achievements.
• Additionally, prompt the candidate to give you details about their past or current achievements that led to their success or failure, and also show their creative abilities and ideas on effective running of a childcare facility such as yours. Consider the fact that hiring long-term employees is cost effective and will eventually lead to the growth of your facility.

When asking childcare interview questions, concentrate on candidates who are attentive and ask questions during the process. Generally, top candidates for childcare worker roles will ask specific questions that demonstrate they have hands-on childcare experience. Additionally, candidates who demonstrate to have done sufficient research on your childcare facility and can give details when answering common interview questions, such as “What is your long-term goal? Why do you want to work in childcare?” Alternatively, questions such as “Why do you want to work here?” will help you figure out which candidates will contribute to your team and mission, because their answers will demonstrate their interests and possibly how their goals align with those of the facility.