Questions to Ask Interns During Interview
A working set of interview questions for intern applicants, arranged as an interview runs: what they know about you, evidence of what they can do, how they behave under correction and ambiguity, then hours, expectations and their own questions.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Tell me what you know about what we do here.
Why ask it
A gentle opener that is still a test. Thirty seconds of accurate description means they prepared; a description of your industry rather than your organisation means they applied widely, which is not disqualifying but changes how you read their enthusiasm.
What in the description made you apply, and what made you hesitate?
Why ask it
The second half is the useful half. Naming a hesitation, the commute, an unfamiliar tool, the length of the placement, shows self-assessment and hands you the objection early enough to answer it.
Which class, project, or job taught you the most, and what did it teach you?
Why ask it
Lets candidates with thin work histories choose their strongest ground. Note whether the lesson is about a skill or about themselves; both are fine, but only one predicts the work they can do next week.
What could you do on day one that would be useful to us?
Why ask it
Distinguishes candidates who have read the role from those who have read the company. Overclaiming here is common and easy to test with one follow-up about where they last did that thing.
What would you need training on before you could work unsupervised?
Why ask it
Asking for the gap directly usually gets an honest inventory, because it is framed as planning rather than judgement. Candidates who claim to need none are either unusual or have never worked to a standard.
Talk me through how you would start a task you have never done before.
Why ask it
You are listening for a sequence: clarify the goal, find a previous example, check in early, then start. Candidates who begin by working alone until it is finished tend to produce the wrong thing beautifully.
Tell me about a time you asked for help too late.
Why ask it
Assumes the failure, which makes it easier to admit. The answer tells you what stopped them asking, usually embarrassment or not knowing who to ask, and both are fixable if you know which.
How do you decide what to do first when three things are due?
Why ask it
Look for a rule rather than a feeling: deadline order, who is blocked, quickest first, hardest first. Interns without any rule tend to work on whatever was mentioned most recently.
Tell me about a time you noticed something was wrong before anyone told you.
Why ask it
Attention to detail is claimed universally and evidenced rarely. A concrete instance, a mistake in a spreadsheet, a broken link, a total that did not add up, is worth more than any adjective on a CV.
Tell me about working with someone whose standards were different from yours.
Why ask it
Reveals how they handle both directions: a teammate who did less than they wanted and one who wanted more than they gave. Watch for whether they resolved it or simply absorbed the extra work silently.
How do you like to be told that your work needs changing?
Why ask it
Practical information for whoever will supervise them. Some people need the reason before the correction, some want the correction first, and getting this wrong wastes two weeks of goodwill.
What is something you tried that did not work out?
Why ask it
Interns are usually coached to hide failure, so the willingness to answer is itself a signal. Listen for whether they can describe the cause without either blaming everyone or absorbing all of it.
Have you worked somewhere with a defined process before, or mostly on your own?
Why ask it
Someone who has only ever worked solo on coursework will find code review, sign-offs and shared calendars genuinely surprising. Knowing that in advance changes how you introduce them.
How would you handle being given a task you thought was pointless?
Why ask it
Every placement contains some. The best answers involve asking what it feeds into; the worst involve either doing it resentfully or deciding unilaterally that it does not need doing.
What are your hours, and is anything going to compete with them?
Why ask it
Term dates, exams, family commitments and other jobs are all normal. What you are testing is whether they tell you now, when it is a scheduling matter, rather than in August, when it is a problem.
What do you want to have learned by the last week?
Why ask it
Gives you something to design the placement around and shows whether their target is realistic. A wildly ambitious answer is worth correcting in the interview rather than disappointing later.
What would make this internship a waste of your summer?
Why ask it
The negative framing gets an honest answer where a question about hopes gets a polite one. If what they describe is exactly what you are offering, you have both saved yourselves months.
Who are you hoping to meet or learn from while you are here?
Why ask it
Access is often what interns value most and the thing they are least able to request. An answer here is a low-cost promise for you and a strong reason for them to accept.
What should we know about how you work that would not show up on paper?
Why ask it
Open enough to catch what your questions missed: a fear of presenting, a preference for written instructions, an adjustment they will need on their first morning. Leave it entirely to them what to raise, and treat whatever arrives as a scheduling matter rather than a mark against them.
What do you want to ask us?
Why ask it
Their questions rank the things they care about. Questions about the work, the team and how they will be judged are the strongest signal in the interview, and the absence of any question is worth gently probing before you conclude anything.
Evaluating Intern Candidates
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Running the interview
Adapt the openers to the level
A first-year undergraduate, a final-year student and a career changer need different opening ground: coursework and clubs for the first, projects and previous placements for the second, transferable work history for the third. Using one script for all three tells you mostly about their age.
Substitute a work sample for experience
Where there is no employment record, a short piece of real work, a data set to summarise, a page to edit, a small bug to describe, gives you better information than another forty minutes of conversation. Keep it under an hour and pay for it if it is genuinely useful to you.
Ask the same thing twice, differently
Nervous candidates fail abstract questions and pass concrete ones. If "how do you handle pressure" produces a slogan, follow with "tell me about the worst week of last term" and score the second answer.
Follow-ups that get past rehearsed answers
When an answer is general
- 1"Can you give me the specific instance you are thinking of?"
- 2"What did you actually do first?"
- 3"Who else was involved, and what did they do?"
When an answer sounds too good
- 1"What was the hardest part of that?"
- 2"What would you do differently now?"
- 3"What did it cost you: time, marks, a weekend?"
What to weigh, and what to ignore
- Weigh evidence of finished work over described intentions. Completion is rarer than ambition at this stage.
- Weigh preparation. Ten minutes reading your site is the cheapest thing a candidate can do and most do not.
- Weigh the ability to say "I do not know". It predicts whether they will admit confusion once hired.
- Discount polish. Interview coaching tracks the school more than the person.
- Discount confidence in conversation if the job is mostly quiet, careful work.
Warning signs
Every story has a villain
One difficult teammate is plausible. A pattern in which every group project failed because of other people usually repeats in your team, where you will be the one mediating it.
Skills listed at a level the examples cannot support
Compare their tool list against what their projects would actually have required, and ask what the hardest problem they hit with that tool was. The gap shows up in one question.
Expectations the placement cannot meet
If they want client ownership, published work or a guaranteed job at the end and you cannot offer those, say so during the interview. Left unsaid, it reads afterwards as a promise you broke.