Hiring guideLicensing and staffing rules checked at source, 15 September 2026

LPN Interview Questions

An LPN interview is a scope check and a load check. Scope, because what a licensed practical nurse may legally do is set by your state’s board of nursing and not by any national rule — IV therapy, blood draws, the line between assessing a resident and collecting data on one, and what may be handed to a CNA all change when you cross a state line. Load, because what predicts whether this nurse is still with you in six months is how many residents were on the cart at the last building and how long the med pass ran. The eight questions below cover both, plus charting, working under an RN versus holding a building alone at 2am, agency history, and the shift the candidate actually wants.

Before you ask anything: the license is a state document

Every other role you hire has one job description. An LPN has fifty. The board of nursing that issues the license also writes the scope, in state law and state rule. There is no federal scope of practice for practical nurses, and anything beginning “LPNs can’t start IVs” is either one state’s rule described as if it were everyone’s, or wrong. Three examples, read at source, all different:

• New York defines practical nursing in statute as performing tasks “under the direction of” a registered professional nurse or a licensed physician, dentist or other licensed provider. The registered nurse definition in the same section is the one carrying the word “diagnosing.” Education Law §6902.
• Ohio writes LPN IV therapy into statute line by line: a peripheral infusion of basic solutions and an antibiotic additive yes; blood products, total parenteral nutrition, chemotherapy, central and arterial lines no; and no line started anywhere except the hand, forearm or antecubital fossa. Where an RN gives the direction, that RN must perform an on-site assessment first. ORC §4723.18.
• California does not use the same job title and regulates vocational nurses through a separate board, which issues post-licensure certificates in intravenous therapy, blood withdrawal, and the two combined. BVNPT post-licensure.

NCSBN keeps a directory of every U.S. board of nursing — state agencies whose job, in their words, is standardizing the requirements for nurses to practice. Read your practice act and delegation rule once, then put the answer in your LPN job description.

Verifying the license is free and takes a minute

NCSBN operates Nursys. Its QuickConfirm lookup is described as a free service letting employers and recruiters retrieve licensure and any applicable discipline documentation in one place, covering RN, LPN/VN and APRN licenses. Not every board participates, so check the participating list before treating a blank result as a clean one. NCSBN also runs e-Notify, complimentary for institutions, which sends real-time notifications about the nurses you employ — status, expiration, renewal and publicly available discipline.

If the candidate holds a multistate license, the Nurse Licensure Compact FAQ says it “pertains to RN and LPN/VN licenses only.” As of 15 September 2026 the compact site listed 43 participating jurisdictions.

In a skilled nursing facility, the federal rule shapes the schedule

For certified long-term care facilities, 42 CFR 483.35 requires licensed nurses on a 24-hour basis, a registered nurse “for at least 8 consecutive hours a day, 7 days a week,” a licensed nurse as charge nurse on each tour of duty, and an RN as full-time director of nursing. Waivers exist in the same section.

So an LPN can hold the building as charge nurse on a tour with no RN physically present — which is what a lot of candidates mean when they say they were “the only nurse.” The same rule requires daily posting of actual hours worked by RNs, LPNs and aides against the census. The staffing number you quote in the interview is one the candidate reads on the wall on day one, so quote it accurately.

Eight questions worth the time

Score them on paper, after a pre-screen on license, shift and pay. An interview scorecard with the same eight rows for every candidate is the difference between a decision you can explain and one you cannot.

“How many residents were on your cart last shift, and how many were on your pass?”

The most informative question here, and the one most employers skip. A nurse carrying 30 residents on days is describing a different job from one carrying 55 on nights, and that number is what they think normal means. You want a figure they can say instantly, with detail behind it: the hall, the count, how many on insulin.

A shrug and “it depended” is weak; anyone who has run a cart still knows the number. Then say your own number out loud and watch the face.

“Walk me through your 9 o’clock med pass. What time did you start and finish?”

The med pass is the spine of the shift in long-term care, and how someone describes it tells you whether they have organized one or only survived one. Listen for sequencing: pulling the cart ahead, grouping the residents who take twenty minutes, knowing which family member arrives at 9:15 and will hold you. A strong answer has boring mechanics and an honest finish time. The weak one claims every pass finished on time in a building where that is not possible.

“It is 9:40 and you are on room 12 of 28. What do you actually do?”

Everyone knows the pass runs long. What you want is the procedure: keep going in order, or triage the time-critical medications first? Call the other nurse, tell the charge nurse, document the late administration? A strong answer names time-critical meds and names a person they told. A weak one is “I just work faster,” or a quiet decision to chart the pass as though it happened on time. If someone offers that last one as normal practice, you have learned something cheaply.

“When do you chart, and what happens to notes that are not in by end of shift?”

Charting is where most LPN performance problems surface, and it is almost never raised in the interview. You are asking whether they chart as they go, at the desk between passes, or in a 45-minute block after clock-out that someone is paying overtime for. All three exist; one is sustainable.

Ask what system they used, whether documentation lived on the cart or on paper, and what the building did about late entries. A candidate who asks which EHR you run has thought about their own shift.

“An aide tells you a resident’s turn will not happen before end of shift. What do you do?”

Delegation is the part of the job LPNs are least prepared for, and the part your building leans on. What may be delegated, and by whom, is again state rule. Know your state’s answer first: you are judging judgment, not testing law.

A strong answer sounds like a person: find out why, reprioritize, help if the pass allows, make sure it gets done, tell the charge nurse if it will not. “I would do it myself” every time is how one nurse ends up doing the work of three and leaving in four months. The same ground from the aide’s side is in our CNA interview questions.

“Tell me about the last time a resident changed on you. Who did you call, and what did you do while you waited?”

This separates a nurse who has worked with an RN in the next room from one who has held a building alone at 2am. Neither is better, but they are different jobs and the candidate needs to know which one you are offering. Strong answers have a chain of custody: what they saw, what they checked, who they called, what they did meanwhile, what they documented. The vitals taken while waiting for the callback matter more than the outcome.

“Why did you leave your last building — and if it was agency, what would bring you back to staff?”

Ask it plainly, then be quiet. Most LPN departures in long-term care come down to four things: the load got unsafe, the schedule changed under them, they were mandated repeatedly, or a manager they trusted left. All four are legitimate, and all four can be checked against your own building first.

Agency history deserves its own minute. Nurses come off agency for schedule certainty, a shorter drive or benefits — rarely for money, because you will not beat the agency rate. If the answer is “I want my schedule a month out” and you cannot post one, believe the mismatch now. The cost of getting it wrong is on our page on nurse turnover.

“If I could give you any schedule here, what would it be?”

Ask before you describe the opening, not after. Asked first you get the truth; asked second you get your own schedule read back to you. Plenty of LPNs prefer nights or permanent weekends, and the candidate who wants the shift nobody else wants is the most valuable person in the room. Follow with the commute: a 40-minute drive is fine in October and a resignation in January.

Answers that sound like problems and are not

Nursing résumés look alarming to people who do not read many of them. Five patterns that get good LPNs screened out for no reason:

• Two years of agency work. Agency pays more, and a nurse who has worked eight buildings has seen eight ways of running a pass. Ask what would make them stay in one place.
• Three buildings in three years. Close to the norm in long-term care. Three specific and different reasons is a person with standards; three versions of one grievance is a pattern.
• No IV certification. In several states this is a separate credential the last employer never paid for. If your state allows it and your building needs it, the fix is a course, not a different candidate.
• Only home health or clinic experience. That nurse has worked alone, judged when to escalate and charted without a desk — most of the hard part of a charge role. Pass speed is trainable.
• A gap in employment. Routinely caregiving, illness or a license in another state. Ask once, accept a plain answer, move on — follow-ups about gaps are where interviews stray into questions you are not allowed to ask.

License status: what to do with each answer

Run the lookup before the interview, not after the offer. It is free, and it changes what you ask.

Verification is not a reference check, and does not replace one — how to run that usefully is in our guide to the reference check.

The market you are interviewing against

Know the pay band before the interview, because the candidate does. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release for May 2025, licensed practical and vocational nurses (SOC 29-2061) held 648,410 jobs nationally at a median of $30.96 an hour, mean $32.24. The Occupational Outlook Handbook puts the same May 2025 median at $64,400 a year, the lowest 10 percent under $49,740 and the highest 10 percent over $83,440.

Setting matters as much as the license. Median annual wages in the same data: government $68,970, nursing and residential care facilities $68,020, home health care services $63,580, hospitals $61,160, physicians’ offices $59,520. Skilled nursing pays an LPN more than a hospital does. On either side of the license, the same release puts the median hourly wage at $46.90 for registered nurses and $20.32 for nursing assistants; that ladder is why tuition support for an LPN-to-RN bridge is a retention tool, not a giveaway.

What it costs to get an LPN to apply

The other half is what it costs to put the job in front of a nurse who is not looking. In Boostpoint’s 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — 891 Boostpoint-managed Meta campaigns, 1,334 campaign-months — LPN and LVN campaigns produced applicants at a median of $12.77 each across 57 campaign-months, with the middle 50% of campaigns between $7.53 and $21.46. Click-through rate ran 1.11%, and 21% of clicks finished an application. Costs are what advertisers paid, management fee included.

An LPN costs less to source than a registered nurse ($19.08 median) and more than a CNA ($7.72). The 21% apply rate is high for a licensed role — nearly double the 11% we see for RNs. Practical nurses finish a short application and abandon an eleven-page one. What each nursing role costs is on RN, LPN and CNA recruiting cost, and where else to spend is in our guide to the best job boards for nurses.

What to say, not just what to ask

The nurse in front of you is probably interviewing somewhere else this week. Volunteer these six things unprompted. Each is a question the candidate has and will not raise, and a reason new hires quit inside ninety days.

• The number. How many residents on the cart, on the shift you are hiring for, on a normal night and a short one. If it is 30 on days and 55 on nights, say 55.
• Who is above them in the building. An RN on site overnight, or a phone number? Say which.
• The schedule, precisely. Which shift, which weekend rotation, which holidays, how far ahead it posts, and your mandation policy. Mandatory overtime is the most common reason a good nurse leaves a good building.
• Pay with the differentials broken out. Base, shift, weekend, and what overtime has actually run at for the last three months.
• Who pays for the certification. If your state requires a separate IV therapy or blood withdrawal certificate and you will pay for the course, say so in the room.
• Where it goes. Charge role, unit manager, tuition support for an RN bridge, or nowhere. Nowhere is an acceptable answer if you say it honestly and pay accordingly.

Then move quickly. Licensed nurses hold offers, and the building that schedules inside 48 hours wins — see interview scheduling and texting candidates. For paid trial shifts, read the working interview page first. What breaks afterwards is on first-90-days turnover and caregiver turnover.

LPN or LVN? One job, two names

Licensed practical nurse and licensed vocational nurse are the same occupation. BLS counts them as one, SOC 29-2061. California and Texas use “vocational,” the rest of the country uses “practical,” and in California the vocational nurses have their own board. The Nurse Licensure Compact treats them as one category too, referring throughout to “RN and LPN/VN licenses.”

LVN interview questions and licensed practical nurse interview questions are the same hiring manager with the same problem. But advertise in California or Texas and the title should be LVN, or you lose the nurse searching the only title they have ever held. Across state lines, put both in the job description. And when you read an out-of-state résumé, the title change is cosmetic — the scope difference underneath it is not.