Questions to Ask Intern Candidates
Questions for interviewing intern candidates who have little or no work history, covering what they have actually built, how they behave when stuck, how much supervision they want, and what would make the placement worth their time.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What made you apply here rather than somewhere else?
Why ask it
An answer that only describes the industry usually means a mass application. Look for something they could only know from your product, your writing, or someone they spoke to.
What are you studying, and which part of it do you actually enjoy?
Why ask it
A course list tells you little. What they enjoyed predicts where they will put effort nobody asked for. Enthusiasm spread evenly across every subject usually means they have not done much of any of it.
Walk me through something you built, wrote, or organised that you are proud of.
Why ask it
Asks for evidence instead of self-description. Candidates with no jobs still have coursework, clubs and side projects, so someone who cannot name a single concrete output is a risk whatever their grades say.
What was your part in that, and what did other people do?
Why ask it
Follows the previous answer to test whether "we" was doing the work. Inflated contributions collapse quickly once you ask who wrote which section or made which decision.
Tell me about something you had to learn quickly with nobody to teach you.
Why ask it
Internships are full of unowned problems. Listen for a method: what they read, who they asked, what they tried first. "I looked it up" with no detail behind it tells you nothing.
When you get stuck for more than an hour, what do you do?
Why ask it
The right answer depends on your team, but you learn their default. Asking immediately is easy to correct. Thrashing in silence for two days is the habit that costs you a week.
What does a good week of work look like to you?
Why ask it
Reveals whether they are picturing collaboration, quiet focus, or constant direction. A mismatch here is a common reason internships disappoint both sides while nobody does anything wrong.
Tell me about feedback you disagreed with.
Why ask it
Tests whether they can hold a view without becoming defensive. The strongest answers include what they did with the feedback anyway, and what they concluded later.
What do you already know about what this team does day to day?
Why ask it
Preparation is the cheapest signal of interest available. Someone who has read your documentation or used your product describes the work. Someone who has not describes your reputation.
What would you like to be able to do by the end of this that you cannot do now?
Why ask it
A named skill gap is far easier to serve than "get experience". If they cannot name one, you will spend the placement guessing at what to assign them.
What kind of work would you rather not spend the whole internship doing?
Why ask it
Candidates almost never volunteer this. Asking saves you handing six weeks of data cleanup to someone who will do it resentfully and quietly disengage.
Tell me about a group project that went badly. What was your part in it?
Why ask it
Failure stories show where they place blame. Be careful with anyone who was the only competent person in every story they tell.
How much checking in suits you: daily, weekly, or only when you ask?
Why ask it
Supervision needs vary widely and have little to do with ability. Naming a preference lets you schedule check-ins rather than discovering the mismatch in week five.
What else is happening for you during this period: classes, exams, another job?
Why ask it
Exam weeks and second jobs are normal and workable. What matters is whether they tell you now or vanish for ten days in the middle of a project.
Has there been a manager or teacher you learned a lot from? What did they do?
Why ask it
What they admired in past mentors predicts what they will need from you: line-by-line correction, autonomy, context, or steady encouragement.
If you finish a task early and nobody is around, what happens next?
Why ask it
Separates the intern who reads, asks or proposes something from the one who waits for the next instruction. Both are workable, but only one needs a full queue at all times.
What is something you believe about this field that people on your course disagree with?
Why ask it
Gives independent thinkers somewhere to show it. Having no settled view is fine at this stage. Being unable to describe any live argument in the field suggests shallow engagement.
Which part of this role are you least confident about?
Why ask it
A real gap named plainly is more useful than a rehearsed weakness. Candidates who claim none are usually harder to coach than those who admit two.
What would make you turn down an offer from us?
Why ask it
Surfaces competing offers, pay expectations, commute limits and start dates while you can still do something about them, rather than after you have closed the other candidates out.
What do you want to ask me?
Why ask it
Their questions show what they have thought about. Questions about the work beat questions about perks. No questions at all can mean low interest or plain nerves, and it is worth naming that to find out which.
Interviewing Interns
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Judging candidates with no work history
Substitute coursework for jobs
A candidate who has never been paid still has a body of work: a dissertation, a failed society event, a game they never shipped. Treat these as real projects and probe them the way you would probe employment history, including what went wrong.
Separate polish from ability
Some candidates have been coached through interviews and some have not, and the gap has more to do with their school than their potential. Where an answer is smooth but empty, ask for the specific instance. Where it is halting but specific, keep going.
Ask the same question in two registers
Nervous candidates often fail an abstract question and pass the concrete version of it. "How do you handle pressure" gets a slogan. "Tell me about the worst week of last term" gets an answer you can use.
Running the conversation
- Tell them the shape of the interview at the start. Nerves cost you signal, and most of it is recoverable for free.
- Describe the actual work, including the dull parts, before you ask whether they want it. Candidates cannot self-select out of something they have not heard described honestly.
- Follow one answer down three levels instead of asking twelve unrelated questions. Depth is where invented experience falls apart.
- Leave ten minutes at the end. Their questions are among the most informative part of the hour.
- Write your notes before you discuss the candidate with anyone else, so the group does not converge on the first opinion voiced.
Common mistakes
Hiring for the interview rather than the work
Confidence in conversation predicts performance in conversation. If the placement is mostly quiet, careful work, weight the sample of work more heavily than the talking.
Overpromising the placement
Interviewers oversell the interesting projects and skip the routine ones. The intern arrives, meets the routine ones, and concludes they were misled. Say what the first two weeks will actually contain.
Leaving no time to answer their questions
An intern who accepts without understanding hours, pay, location and supervision is the intern who withdraws in week two. Their questions are cheaper to answer now.