Two things predict whether an hourly hire is still there in a month: whether the journey works on a bad day, and whether the hours genuinely fit their life. Both are easy to ask about badly.
Transportation
Ask: “How would you get to work here?”
Open, factual, and it gets you the real answer. A lift from someone on the same shift, a bus that runs until eleven, a fifteen-minute walk — all more informative than car ownership.
Then: “Would that still work for a 6am start / a Sunday / if the shift overran by an hour?”
The journey that fails is almost never the normal one. It is the edge shift, and this is the question that finds it.
Do not ask whether they own a car, or about licence points, unless driving is the job.
It is not what you need to know, and it filters out people whose arrangements are fine.
Availability
Ask for days and hours, in their words, before you describe the rota.
Describing the rota first invites agreement. Asking first gets you the truth, and you can compare it to the rota yourself.
Ask what notice they need for a shift change.
A scheduling fact, not a judgement. It tells you whether they fit a rota that moves.
Ask what would stop them starting on your date.
Notice periods, booked holidays, childcare that begins in term time.
Keep it to the job.
You need to know whether someone can work the hours. You do not need to know why, and in many places you may not ask. “Are you available for these shifts?” is the whole question.
Use these without us
Copy any of the questions above into whatever you already use — they work on paper, over the phone, or in a text message. They are here because they are the ones that decide an hourly hire, not because they are ours.
If you would rather not collect the answers by hand, make a screening link: paste the job, keep these questions or write your own, and applicants answer on their phone. The answers come to your inbox and your reply goes straight to them. Free, no account, no card.
