Whats A Project Youre Proud Of
This interview question for interns presents you with an opportunity to brag a little. Its purpose is two-fold.
First, it provides more insight into your capabilities. Most people are proud of their finest work, so its a great way to highlight the pinnacle of your work.
The second reason interviewers ask this question is to see your passion. Internship interviews can be scary. Many applicants over-prepare, making it sound like theyre reading off a script.
With this question, you can speak about a more natural topic that youre genuinely happy to discuss.
Whats An Accomplishment Youre Most Proud Of
When speaking with a potential intern, allow them to share something theyve accomplished either at school or in their extracurriculars. By keeping the question open-ended, youll help them feel empowered because they can choose what they want to discuss with you. Maybe itll be work related or maybe based on something completely different. Either way, this question is sure to garner a good response you can use to judge whether or not the candidate will be a fit for your team.
This type of question is especially strong, says Jordan Burton, the founder of Burton Advisors LLC, because it requires the person to paint a picture of a specific experience versus a simple yes or no question, which wont give you much valuable information during an interview.
Why Is It Important To Interview Interns
Interviewing interns is essential to the hiring process, as it allows you to evaluate each candidate and their abilities. The right questions can help you determine whether candidates meet the role’s requirements and can handle its responsibilities. These questions also provide more detailed information than candidates’ resumes or cover letters, ensuring that you choose high-quality individuals who can add value to the team.
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What Does A Typical Week Look Like For An Intern On This Team
This question provides the opportunity to dig deeper into the typical day-to-day work of interns at the company. You can learn more about what the most common workflows look like and how much an intern gets to interact with other professionals within the organization. Look for routines within the answers they provide: Are there certain meetings or events that happen on a regular basis? How often does the intern have facetime with the internship program lead or their manager? Answers to this question can provide a lot of helpful insight into what the work looks and feels likeand if it seems interesting and engaging enough for you to accept the role if its offered.
Important Questions To Ask When Interviewing An Intern
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Any organisation can gain in various ways from hiring interns. They often perform functions that help lessen the responsibilities of full-time staff, reducing the time spent doing mundane but essential tasks and providing assistance and support for important projects. Knowing what questions you can ask interns during an interview can help you determine whether they are the right fit for the company and contribute to the workflow effectively. In this article, we describe why interviewing interns can be crucial, share 15 questions you can ask while interviewing an intern and discuss how they can help you when hiring one.
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Questions To Ask An Intern Candidate
Internships have evolved over time . Have the questions you should ask internship candidates changed as well? The answer is yes and no.
There will always be questions you cant ask to ensure your company is not discriminating. gives guidance on questions that are off limits. Also, there will always be questions you should ask. The famed question can be a great conversation starter that will walk you through the candidates resume and guide you to relevant experience and skill-based questions.
Experienced-based questions can often be more revealing than skill-based questions. They can reveal a variety of transferable skills, which are important to keep in mind if a long-term goal of your internship program is to fill full-time positions. If one goal of your internship program is to become a mentor, allow candidates to treat your conversation partly as an . Encouraging candidates to ask you questions will give them insight into how their careers could progress.
What Are Your Plans After Completing This Internship And Graduating From School
The answer to this question demonstrates if your candidate has potential to work for your company long-term. Its crucial to identify this because you are investing resources in the candidate and can save time hiring candidates who are already trained for the position.
What to look for in an answer:
- Potential for continued work at the company
- Application of learned skills
- Where and how skills will be applied
Example:
After this internship, I plan to complete my final semester in college and apply leadership, project management, communication and technical skills that Ill gain in my academic, volunteer and extracurricular activities. My plans after graduation include pursuing a career as a business analyst for your company.
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Tell Us About Yourself
A paragraph or so about the person is vital information in this kind of setting. Some of these internships are completely digital but you still need to know personality details about the candidate. This prompts the applying person to prioritize what exact information they give out and shows what they believe is important enough to tell in a work situation.
Would You Recommend This Internship To Others
Employers ask this question to gauge how many applicants they may have that apply to the internship in the future and to see if the internship is attractive enough for interns to tell individuals within their network about it. When answering this question, try to be clear and explain why you would or wouldn’t recommend this internship to others.
Example:”Yes, I would recommend this position to individuals within my network that have similar career goals to my own. I would not recommend this position to someone outside of your industry since it may not match the experience they’re looking for in an internship.”
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Interview Questions To Ask An Intern
When interviewing an intern, your questions can help you decide whether they represent the best fit for the role. Use the following questions to learn about their background, interest in the role and workplace behaviors:
1. Tell me about yourself.
Learning how candidates view themselves can provide observations about who they are as individuals. Their answers often summarize their relevant qualifications and professional goals. They may focus on particular strengths or experiences they believe make them the ideal intern.
2. Why did you choose your college?
This question can enable you to make several observations about candidates, including their decision-making skills. Determining where to attend school is a significant life decision, so their answers can demonstrate their priorities. Think about whether those priorities align with the team and how it functions.
3. Why did you choose your major, and what do you hope to do with it?
In some situations, you may seek interns pursuing a specific degree. This degree shows whether candidates have the specific technical knowledge needed for the role. In other situations, their degree may not matter as much as the decision-making skills they used. This question can offer insights into candidates’ interests, priorities and goals.
4. What coursework have you taken that applies to this position?
5. What do you consider your strengths and weaknesses?
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Interview Dos And Donts
- Find out as much as you can about the job, industry and company
- Research typical interview questions and prepare demonstrable examples for each using extracurricular activities and any work experience you have, even if itâs from part-time work
- Make sure your clothing is clean and prepared well in advance
- Double-check the day before how to arrive at the interview location and how long it will take to ensure you are not late
- Be polite, smile and make eye-contact!
Donât
- Give monosyllabic answers. Even if you get an unexpected question, think quick and use a related example
- Use offensive language. Stay professional at all times.
- Mention anything about your interview on social media. You never know who might see it.
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Highlight A Situation In Which You Put Others Or The Goal Above Your Own Interests
Working together collaboratively and putting collective organizational goals over individual ambitions is imperative in today’s workplace. And while the words sound good, putting them into action is another story. Mertz developed an interview question that presses candidates to prove they have done just that.
Why It Works: “Ethics plays a key role in leadership,” asserts Mertz. “With this request, an interviewee can demonstrate their values while highlighting how they focus on purpose and mission above their self-interests.”
Describe Your Knowledge About Our Organisation And The Industry
A recruiter wants to know that you’ve done your research on their company and industry before your interview. Before the interview, review the company’s website, its mission statement, its products and services and its competitors to learn more about its overall operations. Then, share your knowledge with your interviewer in your answer.
Example:’**This organisation is a top insurance provider within the healthcare industry. Its mission statement is to increase the health of all insurers while ensuring affordable services. The company is well-known for its philanthropic efforts to provide healthcare to those in lower-income neighbourhoods. Overall, it’s projected to grow over the next five years due to elevated demand for insurance coverage.’
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Tell Us A Little Bit About Yourself
Serving as a warm-up question, the hiring manager or team will likely ask you to tell them about yourself. While itâs a general question with many possible responses, you should talk about your current degree program, the year youâre in, and the career that you plan to pursue.
The majority of this response should focus on your education and future plans. However, you could add a detail or two about your hobbies and interests at the end of your answer.
Why Did You Choose To Go To Your College
People learn well in different environments, and where they choose to attend college may help inform how well they may perform at your place of business. For instance, someone whos at a smaller school may prefer a relationship-based learning environment, while someone at a large university may be a better fit with larger corporation. Knowing the right learning environment for an internship candidate can help you determine if the internship is a good fit.
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How To Prepare The Right Questions To Ask
So, how does one go about crafting specific questions? While the details of a role may vary, the process of identifying the right questions is the same. Heres a simple four-step process to prepare questions to ask your interviewer:
1) Research the company.
Start by learning as much as you can from publicly available information. The company website typically includes their mission, objectives, and key information about their products and services. Social media, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, can help paint a more complete picture.
Just be aware that there could be stark differences between how a company views itself vs. how others view it. You might want to look into any public financial informationare they on the rise, or is it a sinking ship? Be sure to take notes in a format that can be easily referenced during the interview.
2) Review LinkedIn profiles.
Its perfectly fine to ask for a list of interviewers prior to an interview. Try to get their names, titles, and departments, and then spend look them up on LinkedIn. You can learn where they went to school, what other jobs theyve held, and when they joined the company. Then, you can tailor your questions to each interviewer. Did they graduate from your college? Ask about their time there. Did they recently change roles within the company? Ask about the transition process and why they made the move. Knowing more about each interviewer helps build rapport, and it shows that you took the time to do your research.
Do You Have Any Questions For Me
Remember that interviews are two-way streets.
The last question is especially important because the answer to this question also reveals what’s important to the candidate and how quickly they can think on their feet. “Are they wondering about company culture or compensation?” asks The Balance. “Are they curious about growth potential, or learning opportunities? There are no right or wrong answers, but personality and communication style are important factors when considering hiring someone to join your team, and you can get a sense of these factors with their answer.”
A lot of the other questions on the list make it easy to learn more about the candidate, too. While it’s important to hire for skill , it’s also important to hire someone who’s likely to be happy in the job for which you’re hiring.
Likewise, it’s important to see how a candidate approaches decision making, to see what their values are, to see what they aspire to be by forcing them to articulate why someone else is smart, to test them for self-awareness and to learn what hard work and success really mean to them. These will all help you decide whether or not a candidate would fit into the company culture, especially if you’re looking to possibly hire them full time after their internship concludes.–
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Describe Your Previous Experience Working As Part Of A Team
Since teamwork is vital for many positions, the recruiter may ask you this to evaluate your ability to collaborate with your colleagues. When you answer, consider a time when you worked as part of a team. Ensure that the example you provide is a situation that generated a favourable result. In addition, explain how your teamwork skills can benefit them as a company.
Example:’When working with the marketing department, I worked with three full-time staff members to generate content ideas for all social media platforms.While we all wanted to promote our individual ideas, we also wanted to create the best outcome for the department. To do this, we knew it was important to collaborate, consider everyone’s input and offer both support and constructive criticism.
As I gave honest feedback about each of our ideas, I made sure it related to the strategy and the goals we aimed to achieve. I plan to take this approach during the internship to ensure we can hear all voices for the greater good of the company.’
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What Is The Next Step In This Process
It is always a good idea to show your interviewer you think ahead. This question shows employers you are eager to begin work. Knowing their answer can also guide you in any measures you can take. For example, if they do not plan to hire for a month, you should wait beyond a week to send an inquiry email about the position, although you can send a thank-you note right away.
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A Few Quick Tips To Help You Ask Good Questions In Your Internship Interview
The questions above are a great starting point for any internship interview. But here are a few additional pieces of advice to help you prepare to ask the best questions as confidently as possible.
Tiffany Waddell Tate is a career and executive coach, speaker, and talent development consultant. She is also the founder of Career Maven Consulting, where she helps women own their career stories and act as the CEOs of their personal and professional lives. Throughout her professional career, Tiffany has helped hundreds of professionals set and achieve their career goals, with an emphasis on leadership development, career transitions, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. See more of her work on her website or follow her on and .
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The Internship Interview: What You Need To Know
Got an internship interview coming up? Itâs vital you know whatâs expected of you and how you should prepare.
There can be some confusion sometimes among candidates about how to approach an internship interview. Many conclude, unwisely, that as the position is only short-term less is expected of them in an interview than would be the case for a full-time position. This is simply not true. An employer, generally, sees an intern as a future investment that may move into full-time employment therefore they expect the most professional of standards.
In many cases, especially with big graduate recruiters , the internship application process will be the exact same as that in their graduate programme . This varies from company-to-company depending on their needs. Consultancy firm Accenture for example does a HR interview and then a business interview, auditing company PwC brings candidates in for breakfast presentations the day before their interview and begins the interview with a case study challenge. Enterprise Rent-A-Car, meanwhile, begin with a telephone interview followed by an interview onsite and assessment centre tests.
In more informal internships a simple chat with the boss may suffice for them to get an idea what you are looking for and to see if that is what you can offer.
