Focus on Experience, Not age (Score 1)

First off, I can not say how much I agree with all the comments on age discrimination, do not, do not, do not mention or imply the age of a candidate (avoid saying things like "Wow, its been a while since you have been in school" or "Man, don't you miss those punch cards"). You will have a much more effective (and safe) interview if you focus on the main goal: - Finding a resource that meets your immediate needs - Finding a resource that can grow with your organization - Finding a resource who fits in with your culture. The third point is the most important. In all the interview and people I have hired, my best fits have been those that fit into the culture the best. From the fun loving college grad to the 25 year veteran of the industry, if the person demonstrates the commitment level you are looking for, a basic understanding of the technology or the issues, and the personality that most everyone in the team can work with, you can teach he/she anything else they need to know. Questions to ask: - What do you look for in a company you work for? (Look at the resume for multiple short term assignments one after the other, ask if the candidate is comfortable in a long term role and why they moved around so much, it's a legitimate question). - Ask about their technology experience? Do they have production support experience and are they comfortable being woken up at 2:00 am to debug a prod problem? Do they know how to debug or do they just have config experience? - Ask them to give you 3 examples of projects or programs they have written using the technologies you are interested in? Don't evaluate just what he/she did, look for detail and facts in the story they are telling you? If they are using terms like "One time I had to write a program that did pricing for a product" then they person may not be as detail focused as "A year and a half ago I wrote a ABAP z-program that determined the variable pricing for the widget product line based on the products Variant Config attributes and utilized a Ztable to determine the product hierarchy) (yeah, sorry, I am an SAP geek). I hope this helps. And again, read between the lines for your real answers. Basing a candidates potential based on the fact you have hired "similar" people in the past will always get you in trouble.