Questions to Ask an Electrician in an Interview
For contractors, shop owners and facilities managers interviewing an electrician for a job: twenty questions covering licence class, code knowledge, safety habits, troubleshooting and how a candidate handles customers and paperwork.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What licence do you hold, in which state, and when is it up for renewal?
Why ask it
Apprentice, journeyman and master licences carry different rights to work unsupervised and to pull permits, and the answer decides what you can legally send them out to do alone. Anyone vague about their own class or renewal date is worth checking against the state board before you go further.
What kind of work have you done most of in the last two years: residential service, new construction, commercial fit-out, industrial, solar?
Why ask it
Twelve years of tract housing rough-in is not preparation for troubleshooting a restaurant on a Friday night. You are listening for the recent work, not the career total, because skills that have sat idle for five years come back slowly.
Walk me through the last service panel you replaced, from shutting off the power to the final inspection.
Why ask it
A narrative answer exposes sequence and habits: utility coordination, grounding and bonding, labelling, whether they mention the inspection at all. Someone who cannot narrate a job they have done many times has probably been handed the easy half of it.
Which code edition does the jurisdiction here use, and what changed in the last cycle that affects your daily work?
Why ask it
Adopted editions lag behind the published code and differ by state and city, so the useful signal is whether they track what the local inspector enforces. Naming a specific change and where it bites is worth more than reciting article numbers.
How do you get to an electrically safe working condition before you put your hands on a circuit?
Why ask it
You want lock-out and tag-out, test the meter on a known live source, verify absence of voltage, then work. If the answer is that they turn off the breaker and get going, you have found the gap that hurts people.
What test equipment do you use, and how do you know your meter is right for the job?
Why ask it
Category rating, condition of the leads, whether they own a clamp meter and a proving unit all say something about how seriously they take measurement. A cheap pen tester as the only voltage check is a red flag on anything commercial.
Tell me about a time you opened a panel and found someone else's work that was not safe. What did you do about it?
Why ask it
This tests judgment and paper trail together: did they make it safe, tell the customer, note it on the invoice, or quietly close the cover. Look for whether the customer was told in writing, because that is what protects you later.
How comfortable are you working on energized equipment, and when do you refuse?
Why ask it
The answer you want is a clear default to de-energize, with the rare exceptions named and PPE attached to them. Casual enthusiasm about working hot to save time predicts both injuries and an insurance conversation.
What is your experience with conduit: hand-bending EMT, rigid, threading, and how are you at a bank of offsets?
Why ask it
Conduit work is the most visible measure of craftsmanship on a commercial job and the hardest to fake in conversation. If the answer is thin, this is the skill to test on the bench before you make an offer.
Have you pulled your own permits and met an inspector alone? What have you been failed on?
Why ask it
Everybody has been failed on something, so a claim of a spotless record usually means they have never been the one signing. The specific correction they name tells you which parts of the code they have actually had enforced against them.
What is the longest you have spent chasing an intermittent fault, and how did you finally find it?
Why ask it
Troubleshooting is where the money is lost or made on service work, and method matters more than the outcome. Listen for how they divided the circuit up rather than a story about eventually replacing parts until it stopped.
What do you do when the drawings and the field conditions disagree?
Why ask it
The good answer involves stopping, documenting and asking the general contractor or engineer, not improvising a route that nobody will be able to find later. Someone who never escalates will cost you on change orders and as-builts.
What is your experience with three-phase power, motor controls and variable frequency drives?
Why ask it
This is the line between residential and industrial capability, and candidates often stretch here. Follow up with something small and concrete, like how they would check rotation or what they would look at first on a drive tripping on overcurrent.
What tools do you own, and what do you expect us to supply?
Why ask it
The tool list is a fair proxy for how independently they have been working and what kind of jobs they have been trusted with. It also gets a real cost on the table now rather than in week two.
Have you run a crew or signed off on apprentice hours?
Why ask it
Supervising is a separate skill from wiring, and some very good electricians do not want it. If you need a lead, ask how many people, for how long, and what they did when an apprentice cut a corner.
How do you tell a customer that the job is going to cost more than the quote?
Why ask it
On service work the electrician is the company, and this is where most complaints start. You want them stopping and calling before the extra work happens, not presenting a surprise on the invoice.
How do you handle materials and paperwork: what do you record and when does the office get it?
Why ask it
Unrecorded material and late timesheets are what turn a profitable job into a break-even one. Ask what they did on their last job specifically, since everyone agrees in principle that paperwork matters.
What is your driving record like, and how do you feel about a company vehicle and an on-call rotation?
Why ask it
Insurability is a hard limit rather than a preference, so it is better raised now than after an offer. On-call is also a common reason good hires leave within a year, so get their real reaction rather than a polite one.
What have you learned on a job in the last year that you did not know before?
Why ask it
The trade changes through code cycles, new equipment and new controls, and this question sorts people who are still learning from people who stopped. A blank answer from an experienced hand usually means years of repeating the same install.
Where do you want your licence and your hours to be in two years, and what would make you leave a job you liked?
Why ask it
Pairing the plan with the deal-breaker gets you both what to offer and what to avoid. Answers about being signed off, getting a master licence or moving off residential tell you how long you can expect to keep them.
Hiring an Electrician onto Your Crew
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Verify before you make an offer
- Look the licence up yourself on the state or provincial board site. Ask for the number in the interview and check the class, status and any disciplinary history rather than accepting a photo of a card.
- If they have been working for themselves, ask for proof of liability insurance and how they handled workers' compensation. It tells you what kind of operation they have been running.
- Take references from a foreman or a service manager who dispatched them, not from a friend on the crew. Ask what they were not given to do.
- Confirm what your insurer and your customers require: background check, drug screen, clean driving abstract, badge access for certain sites.
- Ask about continuing education hours, since most licences require them and lapsed hours can quietly stop someone working.
Test the hands, not the vocabulary
Put a bench task in front of them
Bend a specified offset, wire a three-way switch loop, terminate a receptacle to spec, or read a panel schedule and tell you which circuit is wrong. Fifteen minutes of this outranks an hour of conversation.
Give them a dead circuit to talk through
Describe a real fault you have had: half the receptacles in an office dead, no tripped breaker. Ask what they check, in order, and what they would carry to the job. You are grading the sequence.
Ask what they would refuse to do
A candidate who can name work they have declined, and why, has been thinking about liability. One who has never refused anything either has not worked long or does not notice.
Watch how they treat the apprentice in the room
If you can, walk them past the shop and let someone junior ask them something. How they answer predicts what your apprentices will learn from them.
Answers that should end the interview
- Talking casually about working live because de-energizing is inconvenient, with no mention of PPE or a documented reason.
- No lock-out habit at all, or lock-out described as something the general contractor handles.
- Boasting about work done without permits or inspections, or about talking an inspector out of a correction.
- Blaming every past employer for every past problem, with no account of their own part in it.
- Cannot produce a licence number, or the number does not match the name and class on the board site.
- Describes fixing recurring nuisance trips by upsizing the breaker.
Put the real terms in the offer
- Wage band and what moves someone through it: licence class, on-call, supervising, callback rate.
- Whether drive time and the first stop are paid, and who fuels and maintains the van.
- Tool allowance or replacement policy, and what happens when a meter is dropped.
- On-call rotation frequency, the callout minimum and how overtime is calculated.
- Continuing education and licence renewal: who pays and whether the hours are on the clock.
- For apprentices, who signs their hours and how many hours a week they can expect on the kind of work their programme requires.