I only do after hours, for several reasons. First, I prefer to give the interview my full attention. The things we are discussing (policies, pay, their child, expectations on both sides) and trying to tune in to these parents in order to detect any possible red flags would be too difficult for me to do while also wrangling the 4 children in my care. It's worth it to me to "give away" my time. Interviews are usually 2 hours with lots of visiting and chatter and I prefer it that way because I want to get to know them if I'm going to be caring for their child for (hopefully) the next few years.
Also, safety would be a concern when I'm meeting a random stranger and then inviting them into my home during the day with my own children and the daycare children present. I try to schedule interviews for nights my DH is home, but now he's on nights so that's going to be impossible. I just try to do a lot of "reading" them ahead of time, based on our conversations/ emails and I do try to find them on Facebook.. that helps a LOT!
I've only had 1 parent ask for that. She was torn between a daycare center and my home care, so I'm sure she read a lot of advice about asking to see the provider in action with other children. I just let her know that, once we met, if we both decided it was a good fit, I could check with the other parents about her coming to visit for a bit one day and expressed that my setup was much different than a center, in that I didn't have the "safety in numbers" aspect that they did. I also mentioned that I would pay the same amount of attention to the safety and security of her child, were she to hire me. She was very understanding of it once she realized the issue.
I didn't get the job, but she was on the fence about center care and her best friend worked at a center, so I get it. The baby's father spent the whole time on his cell phone as we chatted and really seemed disinterested in the whole thing anyway, so I wasn't really impressed. This was an infant, 6 weeks old and they were looking for care around 12-16 weeks. HOW do you not pay more attention? Yeesh!