Questions to Ask Potential Interns
Interview questions for employers hiring interns, written for candidates with little work history: what they have started on their own, how they behave when stuck, how they take feedback, what hours they really have, and what they need from the placement.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What made you apply here specifically?
Why ask it
You are checking for thirty seconds of research, not devotion. Naming a product, a client, or something they read is plenty. An answer that would fit any employer usually means a mass application, which is not disqualifying but should lower your expectations about retention.
What are you studying, and what has been your favourite class? Why that one?
Why ask it
The why carries the information. Students who describe what they liked about the thinking, rather than the grade or the lecturer, tend to be the ones still curious in week six when the work turns repetitive.
Tell me about something you built, wrote, or organised that nobody assigned you.
Why ask it
A society, a fundraiser, a small side business, a game mod, a newsletter. Anything self-started shows they can act without a brief, which is most of what an internship demands. A blank here is survivable for a first-year and worth probing.
Walk me through a project you did with other people. What was your part?
Why ask it
Listen for whether they can describe what the others did accurately and fairly. Candidates whose every story has them carrying the whole team are either very unlucky or unable to share work, and both are difficult to supervise.
When did you last have to learn something quickly with nobody to teach you?
Why ask it
You want the method rather than the enthusiasm: documentation, a video, copying a working example, asking in a forum. Whatever route they describe is the route they will take through your undocumented internal tool in week one.
Tell me about a time you got stuck. What did you try first, and how long before you asked for help?
Why ask it
The interval is the whole question. An intern who waits two days loses a week; one who asks after four minutes drains the team around them. Something like half an hour of honest effort before asking is what most managers are hoping to hear.
What is a piece of feedback you have been given that changed how you work?
Why ask it
This tests whether they can repeat criticism without either collapsing or relitigating it. Answers about being told to believe in themselves more are usually rehearsed. Something concrete and slightly embarrassing is the genuine article.
Have you ever known you were going to miss a deadline? What did you do?
Why ask it
You are looking for early warning, not heroics. Anyone who says they stayed up and delivered anyway has not yet learned to raise a hand in advance, and teaching that habit will be part of your job for the next three months.
What do you want to be better at by the end of this?
Why ask it
A specific goal gives you something to manage against and lets you say honestly whether this role can supply it. A candidate who wants something you cannot provide will leave disappointed however well they perform.
Which parts of this job description are you least confident about?
Why ask it
Rewarding honesty here gets you the training plan for free. Anyone equally confident about all of it has either not read the description or will hide difficulties instead of reporting them.
Based on anyone you have worked for or with, what does a good manager do?
Why ask it
Their answer describes what they will need from you, which for many interns is more contact than you were planning to give. It also shows whether they have any workplace reference points at all, which changes how much structure to build.
How do you prefer to be told when something you have done is wrong?
Why ask it
Practical and almost never asked. Some people want it immediately and bluntly, some need it away from others, some want it in writing so they can reread it. Knowing before day one saves several awkward weeks of both sides guessing.
Tell me about a disagreement on a group project. How did it end?
Why ask it
Group coursework is the only workplace conflict most students have had. What matters is whether they can state the other person's position fairly, which predicts how they will handle a review of their work later.
What would make you say at the end that this internship had gone badly?
Why ask it
More revealing than asking what success looks like. Common answers are being ignored, having nothing to do, or never meeting anyone beyond their own desk, and each one tells you exactly what to prevent.
How many hours a week can you actually work, and are there weeks you cannot?
Why ask it
Ask plainly and get exam periods, family commitments, and second jobs onto the table now. Interns are often reluctant to raise these, and an unspoken conflict in the diary becomes an unexplained absence in week five.
Are you hoping this leads to a full-time offer, or are you trying out the field?
Why ask it
Both answers are fine and they should change how you invest. Someone exploring can still do excellent work; someone hoping to convert deserves an honest statement about whether conversion is realistic here.
What do you know about what we do, and which part of it makes least sense to you?
Why ask it
The second half is where this earns its place. A candidate willing to admit confusion about your business during an interview is a candidate who will ask a question before spending three days building the wrong thing.
If we handed you a vague task and nobody was available for two hours, what would you do?
Why ask it
This is the realistic scenario for nearly every intern in their first fortnight. Strong answers involve writing down the assumptions, doing the part that is unambiguous, and arriving with one specific question. Waiting quietly and guessing silently are the two failure modes.
What should we know about how you work best?
Why ask it
This gives quieter candidates a way in, and you often learn about a preference you can accommodate at no cost: mornings, written instructions, a desk away from the corridor.
What questions do you have for us?
Why ask it
Whether they ask anything is a signal, and what they choose tells you what they are anxious about. Questions about the work outrank questions about the perks, and no questions at all usually means they have not pictured themselves here.
Interviewing and running an internship
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Interviewing people with no track record
Ask about school and life, not just jobs
A candidate who has never held a job has still met deadlines, worked in groups, and had to learn something on their own. Take examples from coursework, sport, a family business, or a society, and treat them as real evidence.
Grades tell you less than self-started work
A transcript measures response to instruction. An internship mostly measures behaviour without instruction. Anything the candidate began themselves, however small, is closer to the thing you actually need to predict.
Give them the question in advance if it needs thought
Sending one or two questions beforehand does not make the answers worthless. It removes the advantage held by candidates who have simply been coached in interviews, and gets you closer to how they think.
Assess for teachability over polish
It is easy to hire the most impressive interviewee rather than the one who asked the best questions, and easy to regret it by week three. Weight the willingness to say I do not know above a smooth answer to everything.
Decide these before you make an offer
- Who supervises them day to day, by name, and how much time that person actually has each week.
- One project that will still exist at the end. Interns remember whether their work shipped more than anything else about the summer.
- The first week's tasks in writing, including something small they can finish on day two.
- Pay, hours, and whether the role is legally a job or unpaid experience where you are. Rules on unpaid internships differ by country and state and are worth checking rather than assuming.
- Who they eat lunch with in week one. This sounds trivial and it is a large part of why interns describe a placement as lonely.
- What you will tell them about conversion, and when, so nobody spends three months guessing.
During the placement
- 1Week one: give a finishable task, and set the expectation about how long to struggle before asking, using an actual number of minutes.
- 2Week two: a short one-to-one, and ask what has been confusing rather than how things are going.
- 3Midpoint: an honest assessment against what they said they wanted to improve, plus one thing to change for the rest of the placement.
- 4Final week: have them write up or present what they did. It is useful to your team and it is the artefact they take away.
- 5End: say plainly whether there is a route back, and if there is not, say why in terms they can act on.
Common mistakes
Hiring before anyone has time to supervise
An unsupervised intern produces very little and remembers the experience badly. If nobody can spare two or three hours a week, delay the hire rather than the supervision.
Filler work
Interns can tell the difference between a real task and an invented one within days, and it changes how they talk about you to their whole cohort. One genuine piece of work beats a month of tidying spreadsheets.
Interviewing for skills you intend to teach
Screening interns on tool proficiency selects for whoever had the best-resourced school. Screen on how they learn, then teach the tool in the first week as you were always going to.
Silence about conversion
Ambiguity about whether a job exists at the end is corrosive and costs you nothing to resolve. Tell them what you know, including that you do not know yet, and update them when it changes.