Add the jobs you hire for and every tool in this
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The Table: interview coaching for the hiring chair
Prepare to interview people returning from incarceration, in recovery, leaving the military or living with a disability: what you may and may not ask, the mistake most employers make, practice from both chairs, and a structured interview you can print.
Built from The legal rails for each group as of October 2026 (ADA, EEOC arrest and conviction guidance, Indiana Code 35-38-9-10 on expunged records), structured-interview evidence (Sackett et al., 2022; Kuncel et al., 2013) and if-then commitments (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006)
Five population briefs, seven hiring-chair modules, every scenario the candidates practice, and a four-step interview builder that prints a scored guide. Everything you build stays on your device; nothing is sent to Invest Hamilton County.
The fear of saying the wrong thing is fixable in twenty minutes. This is the twenty minutes.
Interviewer fear does real damage: it produces short, shallow interviews that fail the candidate and the company at the same time. The rules are learnable, and once learned they free you to have a real conversation. Drill the instinct: for each question, would you ask it, as worded, before an offer? (Rules as of August 2026. This is general information for interview preparation, not legal advice, and your employment counsel owns your actual policy.)
Drill one: “'Can you perform the essential functions of this job, with or without a reasonable accommodation?'”
Strong move
Correct. This is the lawful frame, verbatim, and it works for every candidate, not only candidates with visible disabilities. Pair it with a written list of the job's actual essential functions and you have a defensible, useful interview question.
Costs you something
It is the question the ADA built for exactly this purpose. Avoiding it usually means improvising something worse. What you may not ask before an offer is whether someone has a disability, a diagnosis, a medication, or a treatment history. Ability to perform essential functions, with or without accommodation, is squarely lawful.
Drill two: “'Have you ever been arrested?'”
Strong move
Correct. An arrest is an accusation that may have gone nowhere, and the EEOC's position is that arrest records alone do not establish conduct and their use carries disparate-impact risk. Conviction questions, asked consistently and weighed through individualized assessment, are the defensible territory. In Indiana there is no statewide law delaying the conviction question for private employers, but when you ask matters less than how you use the answer.
Costs you something
More information is not better when you cannot lawfully act on it. An arrest that produced no conviction tells you someone was once accused, and building any part of a decision on it invites exactly the challenge you fear. Convictions, job-related, individually assessed. That is the lane.
Drill three: “'Are you in treatment or recovery for drug or alcohol addiction?'”
Strong move
Correct. A person in recovery, including someone taking prescribed treatment medication such as buprenorphine, methadone, or naltrexone, is protected under the ADA, and treatment questions are disability inquiries you may not make before an offer (EEOC, 2020). You may lawfully ask about current illegal drug use, and you may drug test under a consistent policy, with results routed through a medical review officer. And if your policy automatically fails anyone on prescribed treatment medication, that policy is the single most common way well-meaning employers end up in exactly the case they feared. Fix it before it fires.
Costs you something
Safety is managed through fitness-for-duty standards, consistent testing policy, and the medical review process, not through recovery interrogation. Someone stable in recovery who answers honestly gets punished for the honesty, and someone who lies sails through, so the question does not even buy the safety it promises.
Drill four: “'What type of discharge did you receive from the military?'”
Strong move
Discharge-type questions carry risk because discharge status can correlate with protected disability, and the information is rarely job-necessary. 'Tell me about your service and what you were responsible for' gets you everything useful. Also retire any deployment-and-mental-health questions permanently: assuming service means damage is a stereotype with legal consequences, and veterans hear the assumption instantly.
Depends on the room
The honoring is real and the question is still the wrong tool. If a specific clearance or certification is a genuine job requirement, ask about that requirement directly. The full picture you actually need is what they did, what they led, and what they can do for you, and those questions are all safely and fully askable.
Now you, out loud
Rewrite your interview guide's riskiest question using the pattern from these drills: job requirement, directly asked, same wording for every candidate.
One way it can sound
“Instead of anything touching history, diagnosis, or status: 'This role requires lifting fifty pounds, a forklift certification within 90 days, and reliable Tuesday through Saturday attendance. Walk me through how that fits for you.'”
Keep these
Job requirement, directly asked, identical wording for everyone. That pattern is your safety and their fair shot.
Convictions yes with assessment, arrests no. Functions yes, diagnoses no. Service yes, discharge and deployment-health no.
The interviewer who knows the rails asks better questions and runs longer, fairer, more useful interviews.
The Table, part of Alex for Workforce and Alex for Business · alexhamiltoncounty.com · Free practice, both chairs · In crisis, call or text 988
The Table gives general information and coaching
support. It is not legal advice and creates no attorney-client relationship.
It never screens, assesses or treats anything. For your own situation,
including expungement, licensing or what you must disclose in a regulated
field, talk to a licensed attorney. Free and low-cost help:
Indiana Legal Services,
the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic,
and your local public defender's reentry program. In danger now: 988, 911,
or the Indiana Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-800-5556. Facts current as of
October 2026.
Programs that fit this work
Add roles to your set and these rank to your own hiring.
Eligibility is set by each program, not by us.
Free job matching, career services, and labor market resources for job seekers through WorkOne centers. Helps employers find workers and job seekers find jobs.
Who qualifies:
Universal access, ALL job seekers and employers, no requirements. Free.
WorkOne reimburses employers up to 50% of a new employee's wage during a contracted training period. Minimum wage: $13.50/hr for adults, $11/hr for youth. WorkOne pre-screens and refers qualified candidates.
Who qualifies:
Participant must be WIOA Adult/Dislocated Worker eligible. Employer: public, nonprofit, or private sector. Must not show pattern of failing to retain OJT worker…
Places youth ages 16-24 in employer worksites at ZERO cost to the employer. WorkOne pays all wages and workers' compensation. Youth attend weekly career workshops. Hamilton County contact: Dorothee Cooke.
Who qualifies:
Youth meeting WIOA Youth eligibility. In-School: 14-21. Out-of-School: 16-24. Must be low-income (ISY) or face barriers (OSY).
Federal tax credit for hiring people from certain groups, such as veterans, SNAP recipients and people with a conviction. It applies only to people who began work on or before December 31, 2025. Congress has not renewed it for later hires as of September 2026.
Who qualifies:
Employer hires from targeted groups. Ten target groups under 26 USC 51(d) (veterans are split into five sub-groups with different wage caps), including: TANF re…
Free fidelity bonds ($5,000-$25,000) for employers hiring individuals with barriers: ex-offenders, individuals in recovery, poor credit history, or dishonorable discharge. Covers first 6 months of employment.
Who qualifies:
At-risk individuals: ex-offenders, poor credit/bankruptcy, recovering substance abusers, dishonorable discharge, lacking work history, TANF recipients.
Ask about the local labor market in plain language, on top of
your dashboards. Answers carry their sources and point to the tools for the
math. It is an AI coach, your chats are private, and they are never used to
train anything.
The Analyst Coach is a $50/mo add-on · monthly only for
Member or Industry or Premium or Coalition accounts.
Sign in or
see plans.
In crisis? Call or text 988, free, 24/7.
Built by Alex, the Hamilton County Data Hub, from BLS wage records, Census commuting and business patterns, O*NET skill profiles, and licensed Lightcast postings. Wages are set by employers. Ranges, never promises.
