Interview questions for Internship 2

An Overview

You’re expected to be an engaged, productive member of the team. But the company also wants to provide you with an incredible learning opportunity. Internships are an excellent way for you to gain real word experience, network with potential future coworkers and managers, and are an excellent way for you to build your resume and ultimately help lay the groundwork you’ll need to build the future of your own career.
That means you’re not expected to be an expert in the space or have a wealth of “professional” experience to speak to in an interview. Mainly, the interviewer wants to get to know you, your experience so far (including professional, educational, and volunteer opportunities), and how you handle (and will handle) different types of work situations.

1. Why Are You Interested in This Internship/Company/Industry, and What Skills or Experiences Do You Hope to Gain?

As you might guess, this question is used to measure if your expectations and career goals align with the internship and what the company can offer you.
“I’ve always been really interested in mission-driven companies, and your commitment to community engagement really speaks to the values I’m looking for in a company. I’m really excited about this opportunity because I think it will give me exposure to thinking about messaging for many different audiences and through many channels. I was looking at your social media, and am really fascinated by how you craft posts for all of your different initiatives.”

2. Tell Us About a Situation Where You Took Initiative or Took on a Leadership Role?

A lot of times candidates answer this question with an example of leading a group project, which totally works as an option. But it can also be answered with an example of a time when you noticed something that needed to change and took the initiative to change it, whether or not you had a “leadership” title or role.
For example, maybe in your part-time program coordinator role on campus you realized some of your colleagues were struggling with a certain portion of the program because the instructions weren’t super clear. So you took the initiative to ask the other coordinators what could be more clear, and recreated the instructions so the program could be implemented more seamlessly for current and future team members.

3. Where do you see yourself in five years?

In your response, emphasize what drew you to this career path. You don’t need to have a specific future role in mind, but ensure your career goals follow a natural progression from this position to more senior roles in the industry. Your answer should strike a balance between being realistic and being ambitious. But if you aspire to become President of the World by your 30th birthday, it’s best to keep that one to yourself.

4. Why are you applying for this internship?

Hopefully this is a question you’ve asked yourself long before you started the actual internship application process and before you ever agreed to an internship interview.
An internship is an amazing opportunity to get hands on experience in your chosen field, network with peers, meet people who might be invaluable mentors and guides and ultimately might lead to a permanent paying position. Of course, if the internship has absolutely zero to do with your ultimate goals in life, then you’re not just wasting your time, you’re potentially taking this opportunity away from someone who really wants/needs it.

5. Why are manhole covers round and not square or some other shape?
Really? Yes.

This isn’t because they actually want to know why manhole covers are round (it’s because round covers can’t fall through circular openings, don’t need to be rotated to align when replacing, and can easily be moved and rolled in case you were wondering), how many jelly beans it would take to fill up a 5 gallon bucket (if V = (pi)(r^2)(L) ~ (3.14159)((1.5/2)^2)(2.5) ~ 4.4179 cm^3 each jellybean and 5gal(3785cm^3/gal) = 18,925cm^3, then divide 18,925cm^3/4.4179cm^3 = 4283.7 and take into account packing and distribution with 0.80(4283.7) = 3246.9.

6. If hired for this internship, what would my duties and responsibilities be?

Remember, an internship is all about gaining valuable hands on experience for a future career, and you want to make sure that’s what you’ll be getting. If your ultimate goal in life is to become a high powered attorney and the intern experience you’re applying for ends up being nothing more than fetching dry cleaning and picking up mail, then it might not be the right fit for you.

7. How do you deal with stressful situations?

Hiring managers love this interview question because they want to make sure: 1) You’ve handled stressful situations in the past, and 2) You’ll be able to handle stressful situations with their company. If you haven’t had any nerve-wracking experiences at work, branch out a little. For example, if you had a particularly stressful class last year, talk about it.
Interviewers want to gauge how you react under pressure, so use our old friend the STAR method to share an experience with them. Never say that you don’t get stressed; it will raise a red flag for dishonesty with the interviewer.

Some other questions

1. What are your weaknesses, and what will you do to ensure they don’t affect this internship negatively?
2. How do you deal with stressful situations?
3. Describe a time that you took a leadership role in completing a task?
4. Tell me about a conflict that you’ve had with someone you were working closely with and how you resolved it?
5. What are your Strengths?
6. Do you prefer to work independently or in a group setting?
7. Can you describe to me any major trends that our industry has been going through over the last 3-5 years?
8. Tell me about yourself?
9. What do you know about our company?
10. Describe a time when you had some adversity in life and what you did to overcome it.