The Best Interview Questions to ask an Intern – part one

An awesome intern can be a great victory for their working lives. You have another set of hands coming in to help with incomplete projects or deal with the much needed research that just seems to sit there waiting for you to have time for it. You'll have a few extra hours in the day to reach the greatest things you've been wanting. You'll have the opportunity to serve as a mentor and coach and develop their own leadership and management skills.

It is hard to differentiate the quality of the interns especially when they don’t have much work experience or professional skills. What interview questions should you ask if you don’t have a past intern position to use as a gauge? Here are a few questions for different categories that you can ask your interviewee for the intern position. We will look at one category today, on testing the availability of skills and abilities. We will look into other categories is my subsequent post.

Availability of Skills and Abilities

Tell me about the coursework that you have done in school and in what ways is it relevant to this role?

Most classes in college have some professional benefits. There are some obvious way and clear connection in looking for a candidate that has worked in projects or taken classes related to your industry. For example, if you are looking for a public relation intern, then having someone who is doing a degree in marketing and public relations is a better candidate. However, other classes also have indirect benefits. For example, writing papers takes research, organization, time management, and editing skills, and foreign language classes that require students to communicate effectively in a diverse environment. Through identifying such candidates with such qualities, you will get a good sense of where their strengths lie.

Tell me about at time where you volunteer at a community service event.

Experiences such as volunteering in the community, and planning events on campus, or participating in clubs or Greek life can be of incredible value to the development of professional skills. I hired an intern who does not have any work experience but a resume of impressive volunteer work. It's an annual plans 5K for Cancer Research at the campus for three years, and worked in reading a local elementary school for children, and was Secretary of the sorority her fund, showing that she had the highest budget management organization skills. You can ask candidates to describe what they have learned and gained from these experiments can be a great way to determine what it will bring to a professional setting.

What are the skills that you want to get out of this experience and how can your skills contribute to us?

Candidates can have great competences that are not reflected in their coursework or on campus, or they can know that they need experience in a particular area and that their internship provides them with exactly that. Either way, for people who have really thought about what they bring and take out of the opportunity.