Interview Questions to Ask Intern Candidates
Twenty questions for interviewing students and recent graduates for an internship. Most candidates will have little or no paid work history, so these questions look at coursework, group projects, part-time jobs, and how someone behaves when they are stuck, rather than at a track record they have not had time to build.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What made you apply for this internship?
An easy opener that separates candidates who read the posting from those who applied to fifty. You are not looking for flattery, you are looking for one specific detail about the work that they noticed.
- 2
What are you studying, and which part of it have you liked most so far?
Naming a favourite module or topic gives you something concrete to follow up on. Someone who cannot name any part of two or three years of study is usually going to be equally flat about the work here.
- 3
Tell me about a project you were proud of. What part was yours?
The second half does the work. Students often describe group output as if it were personal, and asking for their own contribution shows whether they can distinguish what they did from what happened around them.
- 4
Which tools or software have you actually used, and which are you most confident in?
The word actually gives permission to be honest about the gap between a line on a CV and real use. Confident answers with a caveat, used it for one course project, are worth more than a long unqualified list.
- 5
What do you want to be better at by the time this internship ends?
A specific skill means they have thought about the trade. Answers that are entirely about experience or exposure usually mean they want the line on the CV and have no view on what the work involves.
- 6
Tell me about something you had to teach yourself with nobody to ask. How did you go about it?
This is the closest proxy for what an intern will do most weeks. Listen for method, documentation, worked examples, taking something apart, rather than for the fact that they eventually managed it.
- 7
When has someone criticised your work? What happened after that?
Everyone claims to welcome feedback. The revealing part is whether they can describe a specific change they made, or whether the story ends with them explaining why the criticism was unfair.
- 8
On a group project, what role do you usually end up in?
Most people know their own default: organiser, the one who does the writing, the one who fixes it the night before. An answer that claims all roles equally is usually an answer with no self-observation behind it.
- 9
Tell me about a group project that went badly. What would you do differently?
Nearly every student has one. The answer to avoid is one where the whole problem sits with teammates who did nothing, since that tells you how they will describe your team in three months.
- 10
How do you decide what to do first when three deadlines land in the same week?
You want a rule, not an assurance. Weight, difficulty, whoever is waiting on it, all count. A candidate who says they simply work harder has never had to drop anything, or has and would rather not say.
- 11
You are given a task and after an hour you are properly stuck. What do you do?
This surfaces the failure mode that costs interns the most: silence. An hour of quiet struggle is fine, two days of it is not, and you want to hear what their instinct is before they join.
- 12
How long would you work on unclear instructions before coming back to ask?
There is no single right number, but there is a wrong pattern. Candidates who would never ask worry about looking foolish, and candidates who would ask immediately have not tried to work anything out.
- 13
What do you already know about what we do here?
Ten minutes of preparation is a low bar and it is genuinely informative about interest. Give a short correction if they have it wrong, then watch whether they pick the correction up and use it later in the conversation.
- 14
Which part of this role sounds least appealing to you?
Every internship has repetitive work in it. Someone who names it and shrugs will cope. Someone who insists every part sounds great either has not read the posting or is not going to raise problems once they are here.
- 15
Do you work better with regular check-ins or with a task and space to get on with it?
This is a practical scheduling question, not a character test. Knowing the answer tells the supervisor whether to book a daily ten minutes or a weekly half hour, which prevents most of the friction of a short placement.
- 16
Tell me about a mistake of yours that affected someone else. What did you do about it?
The behaviour you care about is whether they told anyone. A story where the mistake was quietly fixed and nobody found out is a preview of how a problem will surface on your team, which is late.
- 17
What dates and hours can you work, and do you have exams or other commitments in that window?
Ask this plainly and early, because term dates, resits, and other offers routinely collide with placements. Discovering a three-week absence after the offer is signed costs both sides more than asking now.
- 18
If you finish your assigned work early and your supervisor is unavailable, what do you do?
Interns spend real amounts of time in this exact situation. The answers worth hiring involve finding out what else is queued or reviewing their own output, not waiting quietly until someone appears.
- 19
Where would you like to be working a year after this internship finishes?
You are checking whether the placement plausibly leads there. A candidate whose plans point somewhere else entirely may still be a good hire, but you should not assume they intend to convert to a full-time role.
- 20
What questions do you have for me?
Ending here gives them the floor and shows what they were unsure about. No questions at all from a student is common nervousness rather than disinterest, so offer one detail about the team and see whether they engage.
Interviewing candidates with little work history
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Judge them on what they have had access to
Judge them on what they have had access to
Coursework and part-time jobs are evidence
A student who has never held a professional role has still met deadlines, worked in groups, dealt with a difficult customer, and been marked on their output. Treat a group assignment or a retail shift as the sample of work it is, and ask about it in the same detail you would ask an experienced hire about a project.
Test learning, not knowledge
Whatever they know now will be a small part of what the placement requires. The questions that predict a good internship are the ones about being stuck, being corrected, and teaching themselves something, because those situations will come up in the first fortnight.
Ask the same questions of every candidate
Interns are often interviewed casually, which makes comparison impossible and makes bias easy. Fix a short list, ask it in the same order, and take notes during rather than after so you are comparing answers instead of impressions.
Cover the practical terms in the interview itself
Cover the practical terms in the interview itself
- State the pay, the hours, the dates, and whether the work is on site before you ask them for availability, so they can tell you about clashes rather than discover them later.
- Say who will supervise them day to day and how often that person will actually be available. Placements fail most often because the named supervisor was on a deadline the whole time.
- Describe the least interesting part of the job out loud. Candidates who are still keen after hearing it tend to arrive with realistic expectations.
- Explain what the placement can and cannot lead to. If there is no route to a permanent offer this year, saying so is fairer than letting them assume there is.
Common mistakes on the interviewer's side
Common mistakes on the interviewer's side
Screening for polish
Confident interview manner correlates with practice and background more than with capability. A nervous candidate who gives a precise account of how they debugged a problem is usually a better bet than a fluent one who speaks only in generalities.
Asking questions they cannot possibly answer
Questions about managing teams, handling stakeholders, or long careers force students to invent. If you want to know how they would handle something, describe a small real situation from the team and ask what they would do next.
Skipping the reference to school constraints
Term dates, visa limits on hours, and exam periods shape what the placement can be. These are administrative facts worth confirming during the interview rather than assumptions to be corrected in week one.