Interview questions to ask interns in any department, each with a reason to ask it and a good answer, plus a phone screen script and scorecard. Free DOCX.
Six downloadable sets for employers hiring interns in any department: a 10-minute phone screen, ten core questions with a reason to ask each, a department question bank, work sample exercises, a supervisor block, and a cohort ranking sheet.
The interview that taught me the most about hiring interns was one I nearly skipped. Two candidates were left for one seat, the resumes were interchangeable, and I asked the second one what she would do if I handed her a task with no instructions and then disappeared into meetings all morning. She described drafting a rough version, finding an old example in the shared folder, and writing down the one question she would ask at lunch. The other candidate said he would wait.
That is the whole difference, and no resume shows it. Interviewing an intern is not a smaller version of interviewing an experienced hire. There is no track record to check, the schedule is set by a school calendar you do not control, and the candidate is often being interviewed for the first time in their life. The questions have to be built for that.
At FirstHR, we build for small businesses that hire without an HR department, where the owner screens the applications and the person who will supervise the intern has never interviewed anyone. This page gives you six downloadable sets: a phone screen, ten core questions with a reason to ask each, a department bank, work samples, a supervisor block, and a ranking sheet.
TL;DR
Interview interns for four things: learning speed, ownership of small recurring work, how they respond to correction, and whether the schedule they describe survives checking. Screen on dates, hours, credit, and pay in ten minutes first. Ask the same ten core questions of every candidate, add four to six department questions, then score six areas from 1 to 5 and rank the whole cohort before calling anyone.
What You Are Actually Assessing
You are assessing four things: how fast the candidate learns, whether they will own a small recurring task without being chased, how they take correction, and whether their stated availability holds up when you check it. Notice that skill barely appears. Building the skill is the point of the internship.
There is a fifth factor, and it sits on your side of the table rather than theirs. Every intern costs supervision hours, and a small business has a hard ceiling on those. Before you interview anyone, be honest about what you can actually supply, because an intern with nothing to do is a worse outcome than an empty seat.
Hours you can actually give
Two to four hours of real attention a week
Overlap between their class schedule and yours
A named person, not the whole company
A supply of finishable tasks
Work that can be finished inside a week
Enough of it to fill their hours twice over
At least one recurring task they can own
Someone to review the output
A reviewer who will mark up work honestly
A weekly slot on the calendar, not when convenient
A rule for what ships without review
A defined end and a decision
A stated end date for the term
A midpoint conversation while it can still change
An honest answer on whether a return offer exists
If two or three of those boxes are empty, the fix is not a better interview. It is a smaller internship: fewer hours, a narrower task list, and a shorter term. A well-run six-week internship beats a vague four-month one for both sides, and it is easier to staff a short term honestly than to apologize for an unstructured long one.
Screen on Four Facts Before You Interview
Run a ten-minute phone screen on four facts a resume never shows: exact term dates, realistic weekly hours, whether the internship is for course credit, and whether the posted rate works. Those four rule out more candidates than an hour of conversation will, and they cost you ten minutes each.
This matters more for interns than for any other hire, because internship postings arrive in volume and the applications look alike. A structured phone screen is the only thing standing between you and eleven full interviews that could have been four. Set 1 below is the script, in order, with the pass bar written at the bottom.
Fact to settle
Why it decides the interview
What a clean answer sounds like
Exact term dates
More intern hires fail on a date mismatch than on ability
Two dates off the school calendar, exam weeks flagged
Weekly hours and days
Their hours have to overlap with the hours you can supervise
A number plus fixed blocks you could put in a calendar
Course credit
Credit brings deadlines, a named supervisor, and a sign-off
Knows whether it applies and who to ask if not
Posted rate
Pay is settled before the interview, never during it
A yes, or an honest number with a reason
Competing deadlines
Campus hiring runs on deadlines you do not control
A real date you can plan your own decision around
Screening at this level of volume is closer to high-volume recruiting than to filling a senior role, so the discipline that matters is asking the same five questions in the same order every time and writing the answers down.
Which Sets to Use for Which Internship
Use Set 1 and Set 2 with every candidate, then add the sets that match your situation. A one-hour interview comfortably fits the ten core questions, five department questions, and the follow-ups, which leaves the work sample and the supervisor block as separate short steps.
Your situation
Sets to use
Any intern, first contact
Set 1 phone screen, then Set 2 core
The role sits in a specific department
Add Set 3 department bank
Several candidates look identical after the interview
Add Set 4 work samples
Someone other than you will supervise
Add Set 5 supervisor block
Two or more seats to fill in one term
Set 6 ranking sheet, filled in before any calls
Hiring a marketing intern specifically
Use the dedicated marketing set instead of Set 3
Drop anything that does not fit rather than asking all forty questions in one sitting. For a marketing seat, the role-specific version of this kit is the marketing intern interview questions page, and the rest of the library sits in the hiring templates collection.
6 Free Question Sets to Download
Download all six as one file, or copy the sets you need. Every question carries a reason it is worth asking and a note on what a good answer sounds like, because grading a candidate with no employment history is guesswork unless you decide what you are listening for in advance.
10-Minute Phone Screen
Before anyone books an hour
Seven questions that rule out the mismatches a resume hides: term dates, weekly hours, course credit, work authorization, pay, and competing deadlines. Includes the pass bar for booking the full interview.
Core Questions, Any Department
Ask all ten of everyone
Ten questions that need no employment history, each with a reason to ask it and what a good answer sounds like: finishing slow work, handling no instructions, delivering bad news, taking correction.
Department Question Bank
Ops, finance, software, sales, HR
Four to six extra questions per department, answerable from coursework or a side project, so one interview kit covers whichever team is actually asking for an intern.
Work Sample Exercises
30 minutes, invented data
One short exercise per department with the grading criteria written in advance, plus the rules that keep a work sample a test rather than unpaid work.
Supervisor Block and Calibration
For the person who never interviews
A 20-minute block for the future supervisor, a five-minute briefing so they stay on job-related ground, and a calibration sheet for resolving two interviewers who disagree.
Scorecard and Cohort Ranking
Rank before you call anyone
A 1-to-5 rubric across six areas, a ranking sheet for several candidates against several seats, tie-breakers, an offer sequence, and both red-flag lists.
Download All Six Sets, the Work Samples, and the Ranking Sheet
A phone screen script, ten core questions, a department bank, work sample exercises with grading criteria, a supervisor block, and a cohort ranking sheet. All in one DOCX.
Set 1: 10-Minute Intern Phone Screen Script
Seven questions and a pass bar, run before anyone books an hour. Dates, hours, course credit, work authorization, pay, and competing deadlines.
10-Minute Intern Phone Screen Script
INTERN PHONE SCREEN: 10 MINUTES
Candidate: __
Department / supervisor: __
Screener: __
Date: _
HOW TO USE THIS SET
Run this before anyone books an hour. An internship posting at a small business
can pull dozens of near-identical applications, and most of the ones you should
not interview are ruled out by four facts: the term dates, the weekly hours, the
credit requirements, and whether the posted rate works for them. Ask these in
order, keep it to ten minutes, and only book the full interview for candidates
who clear the pass bar at the bottom.
QUESTIONS, IN ORDER
1. What are your exact start and end dates for the term?
Why ask: more intern pipelines fail on a date mismatch than on skill, and a
resume never shows it.
Good answer: two specific dates, usually taken straight off the school
calendar, with the exam weeks flagged.
2. How many hours a week can you work, and on which days?
Why ask: your ability to supervise is the real constraint, so the schedule
has to overlap with the hours you are actually at your desk.
Good answer: a number plus fixed blocks ("Tuesday and Thursday, 9 to 3").
3. Is this internship for course credit? If it is, what does the school need
from me and by when?
Why ask: credit paperwork carries deadlines, a named supervisor, and a
sign-off at the end of the term. Learning that in week six is painful.
Good answer: knows whether credit applies, and knows who to ask if not.
4. Are you legally authorized to work in the United States for the full term?
Why ask: it is job-related and it goes to every candidate in exactly these
words. Ask it of everyone or ask it of no one.
Good answer: a direct yes, or a direct answer naming the authorization step
they still have to complete with their school.
5. Which department did you apply to, and what do you think the work is?
Why ask: it separates a candidate who read the posting from one who sent the
same application to forty employers in an afternoon.
Good answer: names the department and at least one real task from the posting.
6. Does the posted rate work for you?
Why ask: pay is settled before the interview, never during it, and a
candidate who needs more should say so now.
Good answer: a yes, or an honest number and a reason.
7. Where else are you in the process, and when is your earliest decision
deadline?
Why ask: campus hiring runs on deadlines. If another offer expires before
your decision date, you need to know in week one, not on the day you call.
Good answer: an honest list and a real date.
PASS BAR: BOOK THE FULL INTERVIEW IF
•The dates cover the work you need done
•The weekly hours are enough for the tasks you actually have waiting
•Credit requirements, if any, are something you can meet
•They can describe the role in their own words
•No decision deadline that lands before your own
NOTES
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Set 2: Core Questions to Ask Any Intern
Ten questions for every candidate in every department, none of which require a work history, each with a reason to ask it and what a good answer sounds like.
Core Interview Questions to Ask Any Intern
CORE INTERN INTERVIEW QUESTIONS (ANY DEPARTMENT)
Candidate: __
Department: __
Interviewer: __
Date: _
HOW TO USE THIS SET
Ask all ten of every intern candidate, in this order, whatever department the
role sits in. None of them require employment history to answer well, and each
one carries a reason it is worth asking plus a note on what a good answer
sounds like. Add the department questions from Set 3 after these, then score on
the rubric in Set 6.
QUESTIONS
1. Tell me about the last thing you finished that took more than a week.
Why ask: an internship is a stack of multi-week tasks with no grade attached.
Finishing something slow is the closest available proxy.
Good answer: a real project, the middle part where it got boring, and how it
ended. The middle is the part that matters.
2. Who is the most demanding person you have worked for or with, and what did
they expect?
Why ask: it calibrates what "high standards" means to this candidate, which
tells you how your feedback will land.
Good answer: a specific person and a specific standard, described without
resentment.
3. You get a task with no instructions and I am in meetings all morning. What
do you do in the first hour?
Why ask: at a small business an intern works unsupervised for long stretches
in their first week. This is the single most predictive question on the list.
Good answer: looks for a previous example of the same thing, drafts a first
version, and writes down the specific question to ask when you are free.
4. Tell me about a time you had to tell someone in charge that something was
not going to be done on time.
Why ask: interns rarely fail loudly. They go quiet, and you find out at the
deadline. You are testing whether bad news travels.
Good answer: told the person early, proposed what would still be delivered.
A candidate who has never done this says so, which is also useful.
5. What part of this internship do you expect to dislike?
Why ask: every intern role has repetitive work in it. A candidate who cannot
name any downside has either not thought about the job or is telling you what
they think you want.
Good answer: names something real from the posting and says why they will do
it anyway.
6. If I gave you one small task to own for the whole term, what would make you
good at it by week four?
Why ask: ownership of a recurring task is what actually makes an intern worth
the supervision time. This asks how they think about getting better at it.
Good answer: repetition, a written checklist, asking someone who does it now.
7. Which weeks of the term are already spoken for?
Why ask: exam weeks, a second job, a family trip, a wedding. Every one of
these is manageable when you know in the interview, and disruptive when you
do not.
Good answer: volunteers the bad weeks without being pushed.
8. Tell me about feedback you disagreed with. What did you do?
Why ask: response to correction decides how much of your term is spent
improving work versus defending it.
Good answer: did the work the way it was asked, then made the case
separately, or changed their mind and can say why.
9. What do you want to have on your resume at the end of this term, and does
this role produce it?
Why ask: a mismatch here is the most common reason an intern disengages in
week five. Better to find it now than to lose them halfway.
Good answer: something concrete that your role actually produces, and the
honesty to say if part of it does not.
10. Who else is interviewing you, and what would make you choose them over us?
Why ask: you learn your real competition and their real priorities, and the
answer tells you what to emphasize when you call with an offer.
Good answer: honest, specific, and not flattering.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR ACROSS ALL TEN
•Concrete examples at any scale, however small the stakes
•Bad news delivered early rather than hidden
•Honesty about what they have not done
•An answer on hours and dates you could check against a calendar
NOTES
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Still Using Spreadsheets for Onboarding?
Automate documents, training assignments, task management, and track onboarding progress in real time.
Four to six extra questions each for operations, finance, software, sales, and HR, all answerable from coursework, a club, or a side project.
Department Question Bank: Ops, Finance, Software, Sales, HR
INTERN QUESTION BANK BY DEPARTMENT
Add four to six of these to the core set in Set 1. Nothing here assumes a
previous job. Every question is answerable from coursework, a club, a family
business, or a side project.
OPERATIONS AND ADMINISTRATION
•Describe a process you had to follow exactly, and what happened when someone
skipped a step.
Why ask: ops interns inherit checklists, and the whole value is doing them the
same way every time.
•You find two versions of the same file and you do not know which is current.
What do you do?
Why ask: small businesses are full of this. The answer separates guessing
from checking.
•What is the most repetitive task you have ever done, and did you change
anything about how you did it?
Why ask: initiative inside boring work is exactly what you are buying.
•How organized is your own coursework, honestly, and what system do you use?
Why ask: a candidate who cannot run their own calendar will not run yours.
FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING
•Walk me through a spreadsheet you built. What was in it and who used it?
Why ask: it is the fastest read on real spreadsheet ability versus a line on
a resume.
•Two numbers that should match do not. How do you find the difference?
Why ask: reconciliation thinking is teachable, but the instinct to chase the
gap is not.
•What would you do if you noticed something in the books that looked wrong and
the person who entered it is senior to you?
Why ask: interns see errors and stay quiet. You want the ones who speak.
•How comfortable are you with a task where you check the same thing forty times
and thirty-nine are fine?
Why ask: sets an honest expectation about the actual work.
SOFTWARE, DATA, AND IT
•Tell me about the last bug you could not solve. What did you try?
Why ask: the recovery sequence matters more than the current skill level.
•Show me something you built that nobody assigned. What would you change?
Why ask: unassigned work is the clearest signal of interest, and the critique
is the clearest signal of judgment.
•How do you decide when to ask for help instead of pushing through?
Why ask: both extremes cost you a week.
•What did you use an AI assistant for recently, and how did you check the
output?
Why ask: the checking habit is the part worth hiring for.
SALES AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
•Tell me about a time you had to ask a stranger for something.
Why ask: no sales experience required, and the discomfort tolerance shows.
•What would you say in the first ten seconds of a call to someone who did not
expect it?
Why ask: tests preparation and nerve without pretending they have a track
record.
•How do you handle being told no repeatedly in one afternoon?
Why ask: the honest answer here predicts week three better than enthusiasm.
•What would you want to know about our customers before your first call?
Why ask: curiosity about the buyer is the one thing you cannot install.
HR AND PEOPLE OPERATIONS
•You are handed a file with employee information in it. What are the rules you
would set for yourself?
Why ask: confidentiality instinct is the entry requirement for the department.
•Someone tells you something in confidence that you think your manager needs to
know. What do you do?
Why ask: there is no perfect answer, but there is a thoughtful one.
•What would make a first day feel welcoming, based on any first day you have
had anywhere?
Why ask: onboarding work is most of what an HR intern will actually touch.
•How would you keep track of thirty small requests from twelve different
people?
Why ask: the department is coordination, and this is the coordination test.
NOTES
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Set 4: Work Sample Exercises and Grading Notes
One 30-minute exercise per department on invented data, the criteria to grade it against, and the rules that keep an exercise a test rather than unpaid work.
Intern Work Sample Exercises and Grading Notes
INTERN WORK SAMPLE EXERCISES
Candidate: __
Exercise assigned: __
Time cap stated: __
THE RULES BEFORE THE EXERCISES
•Cap it at 30 minutes and say the cap out loud. An intern candidate is a
student with a schedule, and a four-hour take-home screens for free time
rather than for ability.
•Use invented data and an invented scenario. The moment the output is
something you would actually use, it is work, and it belongs in a paid role.
•Give the same exercise to every candidate for the same seat.
•Grade against written criteria you wrote before you saw any submission.
•Tell them what happens to it: reviewed, scored, then deleted.
EXERCISE BY DEPARTMENT
OPERATIONS: Here is a made-up list of 20 supply orders with three duplicates and
two missing dates. Clean it and tell me what you changed.
Grade: did they find all five problems, did they document the changes, did they
ask a question before assuming.
FINANCE: Here are two invented statements that should reconcile and do not.
Find the difference and describe it in two sentences.
Grade: found the gap, explained it in plain language, did not invent a cause.
SOFTWARE: Here is 30 lines of code with one logic error. Describe what it does
and where it breaks. No need to run it.
Grade: read the code rather than guessed, described the failure precisely,
admitted uncertainty where it existed.
SALES: Write the three sentences you would send to a made-up prospect after they
opened your email twice and did not reply.
Grade: specific, short, no pressure tricks, one clear ask.
HR: Draft the first-week schedule for a new hire at a fictional 12-person
company. One page.
Grade: sequencing, whether anything is scheduled on day one that needs an
account nobody has created yet, tone.
GRADING SHEET
Followed the instructions given Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Quality of the actual output Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Asked a clarifying question where sensible Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Finished inside the stated time cap Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Total: ______ / 25
Note: a candidate who asks one sharp question before starting usually scores
higher on everything else. Track it.
NOTES
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Set 5: Supervisor Block and Calibration Sheet
A 20-minute block for the person who will actually supervise the intern, a five-minute briefing for a first-time interviewer, and a sheet for resolving disagreement.
Supervisor Interview Block and Calibration Sheet
SUPERVISOR BLOCK AND TWO-INTERVIEWER CALIBRATION
Candidate: __
Supervisor: __
Date: _
WHY THIS SET EXISTS
The person who will actually supervise the intern is usually not the person who
posted the role, and at a small business they have often never interviewed
anyone. Give them 20 minutes, six questions, and a rating sheet. That is enough
to catch the mismatches an owner in a hurry will miss, and it makes the
supervisor an owner of the decision rather than a recipient of it.
BRIEF THE SUPERVISOR FIRST (5 MINUTES)
•Here are the six questions. Ask these, in this order, of every candidate.
•Do not ask about age, graduation year, family, origin, religion, or health.
•Write down what they say, not what you thought of it.
•Rate the four areas before we talk. Do not tell me your rating first.
THE SUPERVISOR'S SIX QUESTIONS
1. Here is the actual task list for the first two weeks. Which item would you
want to start with, and which one worries you?
Why ask: it turns an abstract role into a concrete reaction, and the worry is
usually the honest part.
2. When I review your work and mark it up, how do you want that delivered?
Why ask: the supervisor is about to do this weekly. Learning the preference
now saves both of them.
3. What do you already know how to do that I have not asked about?
Why ask: interns routinely arrive with a skill nobody discovered until month
two.
4. How will I know when you are stuck?
Why ask: agreeing on the signal in the interview makes it usable later.
5. What is the amount of direction you want: a task, a task with an example, or
a task with a walkthrough?
Why ask: an honest answer here tells the supervisor exactly how much of their
week this costs.
6. If this term went well, what would you want to be doing at the end of it?
Why ask: it surfaces whether a return offer is even the goal.
CALIBRATION SHEET (BOTH INTERVIEWERS FILL THIS IN SEPARATELY)
Interviewer 1 Interviewer 2
Can do the first-week tasks [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Cost of supervision, low is good [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Takes correction well [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Schedule holds up to checking [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Resolution rule: any area where the two scores differ by 2 or more gets
discussed before anything else, using the notes, not the impressions. Those gaps
are where the useful conversation is, and they are usually caused by one
interviewer hearing an answer the other never asked for.
NOTES
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Set 6: Scorecard, Cohort Ranking, and Offer Sequence
A 1-to-5 rubric across six areas, a sheet for ranking several candidates against several seats, tie-breakers, an offer order, and both red-flag lists.
Intern Scorecard, Cohort Ranking, and Offer Sequence
INTERN SCORECARD AND COHORT RANKING
Term: __
Seats open: __
Decision date: __
PER-CANDIDATE SCORECARD (FILL IN WITHIN TEN MINUTES OF THE INTERVIEW)
Candidate: __
Motivation for this specific role Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Evidence: __
Evidence of learning speed Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Evidence: __
Ownership and follow-through Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Evidence: __
Communication with a supervisor Score: [ 1 2 3 4 5 ]
Write evidence, not impressions. "Said she told her professor three days early
that the draft would be late" is evidence. "Seemed responsible" is not.
COHORT RANKING SHEET
Candidate Total /30 Sample /25 Dept fit Rank Offer order
_ ______ ______ ______ ____ ____
_ ______ ______ ______ ____ ____
_ ______ ______ ______ ____ ____
_ ______ ______ ______ ____ ____
_ ______ ______ ______ ____ ____
_ ______ ______ ______ ____ ____
TIE-BREAKERS, IN THIS ORDER
1. Availability that matches the weeks you actually need covered
2. Response to correction, because it compounds across the whole term
3. The department the supervisor scored higher, not the one you liked more
4. Interest in coming back, if a return offer is part of your plan
OFFER SEQUENCE
•Rank everyone before you call anyone.
•Call the first choice, give a response deadline that is realistic for a
student, and put the number two in writing as a backup before that deadline
passes.
•Do not hold five candidates waiting for one seat. Students accept elsewhere
and stop replying, and word travels through a campus faster than you expect.
•Decline the rest inside a week, by email, in two sentences. It costs nothing
and it protects next year's pipeline.
RED FLAGS WORTH THE DECLINE
•Cannot name a single thing about your business
•Presents a group project as entirely their own work
•Every past supervisor, professor, or teammate was unreasonable
•Hours that change every time you ask
•Wants a title, not the tasks
THINGS THAT ONLY LOOK LIKE RED FLAGS
•Nervousness in what may be a first professional interview
•A thin resume, which is what an internship is for
•No experience with your specific tools
•A school you have never heard of
NOTES
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Adapting the Core Questions by Department
Keep the ten core questions fixed and swap only the department probe, so candidates stay comparable across teams. The core set measures learning speed and ownership, which look the same everywhere. The department questions measure whether a specific week of work will go well.
Department
Swap in this probe
What a good answer contains
Operations and admin
A process you had to follow exactly, and what happened when a step got skipped
Awareness that the checklist exists for a reason, plus one thing they improved
Finance and accounting
Two numbers that should match do not. How do you find the difference?
A search order, and the instinct to chase the gap rather than round it away
Software and data
The last bug you could not solve. What did you try?
A real sequence of attempts and an honest stopping point
Sales and business development
A time you had to ask a stranger for something
Discomfort acknowledged, and the ask made anyway
HR and people operations
The rules you would set for yourself when handed employee information
Confidentiality reasoning that arrives without prompting
The most useful follow-up in every department is the same one: what happened next? Candidates describing something they actually did keep producing detail. Candidates describing something they planned run out in about two sentences. That single probe does more work than any clever question, and it is the reason the STAR method still holds up with candidates who have never held a job.
Give a 30-minute exercise on invented data, identical for every candidate competing for the seat, graded against criteria you wrote before the first submission arrived. For intern hiring this is unusually valuable, because it is the only independent read on a candidate whose resume you cannot verify.
The exercises in Set 4 are deliberately small: clean a messy supply list, reconcile two invented statements, find the logic error in thirty lines of code, write three follow-up sentences to a fictional prospect, draft a first-week schedule for an imaginary company. Each one takes half an hour and each one separates candidates who looked identical in conversation.
A Test Is Short and Invented. Anything Else Is Work.
Cap the exercise at 30 minutes and say the cap out loud, because a long take-home screens for free time rather than for ability. Use a fictional scenario and fictional data. The moment a candidate is producing something you intend to use, it is work rather than an assessment, and work at a for-profit business generally has to be paid. The Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #71 sets out the seven-factor primary beneficiary test that decides whether an unpaid internship is lawful at all. This is general information, not legal advice.
Grade five things: instructions followed, output quality, whether they asked a clarifying question before starting, how clearly they explained their reasoning, and whether they finished inside the cap. In my experience the clarifying question predicts the rest of the term better than the output does.
Dates, Credit, Pay, and Work Authorization
Four logistics items decide whether an internship happens at all, and all four belong in the phone screen rather than the offer call. Term dates and weekly hours have to survive being checked against a calendar. Course credit brings its own paperwork. Pay is decided before you post. Work authorization has a timeline.
On pay, most small businesses should simply pay the intern. It widens the pool well past students who can afford to work free, and it removes the compliance question entirely. The full analysis of paid versus unpaid, including the primary beneficiary test and the state rules that go further than federal law, is in our guide on how to hire interns.
Work authorization deserves its own minute. Ask every candidate the same neutral question about being authorized to work for the dates of the internship, and ask it of the whole shortlist rather than selectively. Our explainer on work authorization covers what you may confirm and when.
International Students Need Lead Time, Not a Different Question
A student on an F-1 visa generally needs employment authorization arranged through their school before an internship starts, and USCIS explains the student employment categories that apply. The process runs on a school timeline that can take several weeks, which is exactly why the question belongs in the phone screen and not in the week before the start date. Ask about authorization and timing, never about citizenship or country of origin, and ask it of everyone.
One more item applies if your intern may be under 18. High school interns fall under federal and state youth employment rules that limit hours and occupations, so check the child labor rules for your state before you post the role rather than after you interview.
Fair, Legal, and Structured Interviewing
Ask the same job-related questions of every candidate and write down what they said. That one habit is your compliance posture, your bias control, and the reason your intern hiring gets better each term. With student candidates, a few traps have a particular shape.
Ask work authorization the same way, of everyone
Ask every candidate whether they are legally authorized to work in the United States for the dates of the internship, in those words, and ask it of the whole shortlist rather than of the candidates whose name or accent prompted the thought. Federal law bars deciding on citizenship status or national origin, and it also bars demanding specific documents at the interview stage. Document verification belongs on Form I-9 after the hire, where the candidate chooses which acceptable documents to present. This is general information, not legal advice.
Graduation year is an age question wearing a costume
With student candidates the protected-characteristic traps have a particular shape. Asking when someone graduated high school, which sorority they belong to, whether their parents live nearby, or how they will get to the office are all questions that produce information you cannot lawfully use, and they are easy to ask by accident while making conversation. Replace each one with the job-related version: can you work the posted schedule for the full term, and can you perform the tasks in the posting.
Brief anyone who interviews, even for twenty minutes
At a small business the future supervisor, the office manager, and sometimes another intern all end up in the room, and none of them have been trained. A five-minute briefing before the interview does most of the work: here are the questions, ask these and only these, write down what the candidate says, and do not ask about age, family, origin, religion, or health. The supervisor block in Set 5 opens with exactly that briefing so it does not depend on anyone remembering.
Keep the work sample short, invented, and unused
A 30-minute exercise on invented data is a test. A three-hour assignment that produces something you will use is work, and work at a for-profit business generally has to be paid. Cap the time, say the cap out loud, use a fictional scenario, give the same exercise to everyone competing for the seat, and grade against criteria you wrote before the first submission arrived. Then tell the candidate what happens to their file.
Structure Matters More When There Is No Resume to Read
A structured interview, where every candidate answers the same prepared questions scored against the same rubric, predicts on-the-job performance more reliably than a free-flowing conversation, and the gap widens when there is no work history to anchor the discussion. Asking identical job-related questions of everyone also keeps you inside the EEOC rules against deciding on protected characteristics, and the EEOC guidance on citizenship inquiries covers the work authorization question specifically.
The full list of questions to keep out of any interview, with a better replacement for each, is in our guide to illegal interview questions. This is general information, not legal advice.
Let the Supervisor Interview Too
Give the person who will actually supervise the intern a 20-minute block of their own, with six fixed questions and a rating sheet. At a small business that person is usually not the one who posted the role, and they are the one whose week the hire will consume.
Brief them for five minutes first. Here are the questions, ask these and only these, write down what the candidate says rather than what you thought of it, and do not ask about age, family, origin, religion, or health. That briefing is built into Set 5 precisely so it does not depend on anyone remembering, and it is the smallest useful version of training a hiring manager.
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Then calibrate. Both interviewers rate four areas independently before either says a number out loud, and any area where the scores differ by two or more gets discussed first, using the written notes. Those gaps are where the useful conversation lives, and they usually come from one interviewer hearing an answer the other never asked for. The same discipline applies whether you run a formal panel interview or just two people in a back office.
The Supervisor Question That Saves the Term
Ask the candidate how much direction they want: a task, a task with an example, or a task with a walkthrough. The answer is not right or wrong, it is a cost estimate. A candidate who needs a walkthrough for everything may be an excellent hire if the supervisor has the time, and a poor one if they do not. Getting an honest answer in the interview beats discovering it in week two, and it gives you something concrete to write on the interview evaluation form.
Ranking a Cohort and Making Offers
Rank every candidate on one sheet before you call anyone. Intern hiring is rarely one seat evaluated one candidate at a time. It is usually two or three seats, eight to eleven interviews, and a decision deadline set by a school calendar, which makes it a ranking problem rather than a series of yes-or-no calls.
Score six areas from 1 to 5 within ten minutes of each interview ending, with evidence written next to each number. Then put every candidate on the ranking sheet with their interview total, their work sample score, and the department fit, and sort.
1
Score inside ten minutes
Fill in six areas from 1 to 5 with evidence, not impressions, while the answers are still exact. Anything you postpone becomes a general feeling by evening.
2
Rank the whole group on one sheet
Interview total, work sample score, department fit, and a rank. Comparable numbers beat memory when eleven candidates blur together.
3
Break ties in a fixed order
Availability for the weeks you need, then response to correction, then the department the supervisor scored higher, then interest in returning.
4
Call in order with a real deadline
Give a response window a student can actually meet, and put your second choice in writing as a backup before that window closes.
5
Decline everyone else inside a week
Two sentences by email. Students talk to next year’s applicants, and silence costs you a pipeline that a short note would have kept.
If your intern pipeline runs through a school, the same ranking discipline feeds back into next year, because a clean process is what makes a career center send you candidates again. Our guide to campus recruitment covers that relationship, and a short rejection email template keeps the declines from being the step that never happens.
Interviewing Interns Without an HR Department
At a large company an intern candidate meets a campus recruiter, a structured panel, and a program coordinator who chases the paperwork. At a small business one or two people do all of it between customer calls, which is exactly why a prepared set of questions beats improvising a conversation you are about to have nine more times.
The department asking for an intern is not the department you know best
An owner who came up through sales ends up interviewing a finance intern, and a founder who writes code ends up interviewing an operations intern. You cannot fake depth in a department you have never worked in, and you do not have to. Ask the ten core questions yourself, hand the department questions and the 20-minute block to whoever will supervise, and compare the two rating sheets afterward. The kits above split along exactly that line for that reason.
Interns arrive as a cohort, and cohorts have to be ranked, not just approved
Hiring one experienced person is a yes or no on each candidate in turn. Hiring interns is usually three seats, eleven interviews, and a decision deadline set by a school calendar you do not control. That is a ranking problem, and ranking needs comparable numbers rather than memory. Score every candidate on the same six areas within ten minutes of the interview, rank the whole group on one sheet, and only then start making calls in order.
The interview is the cheap part; the paperwork and the first week are where it breaks
A paid intern is an employee, so the same new hire paperwork applies, plus whatever the school requires for credit and a supervisor who signs off at the end of the term. FirstHR handles that people side for a small business: send the offer for e-signature, run the onboarding checklist and task workflow, and keep the signed documents and the interview scorecards on the employee profile instead of in four inboxes. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
If you have never run one of these, the mechanics matter as much as the questions: same order every time, notes taken during rather than after, and the scorecard filled in before the next candidate arrives. Our guide on conducting an interview covers the rest.
From Interview to Offer and First Week
Once you pick someone, an intern needs the same care as any other hire plus two extras: whatever the school requires for credit, and a first week that is planned rather than improvised. Put the term dates, weekly hours, pay, and the named supervisor in writing with the internship offer letter before day one.
Put the whole term in the offer
Start and end dates, weekly hours, hourly pay, the named supervisor, and whether the role is on site, remote, or a mix. Signed before the first day.
Run the standard paperwork
A paid intern is an employee: I-9, W-4, state forms, and a confidentiality acknowledgment, plus the school's credit forms if they apply.
Plan week one hour by hour
Accounts and access created before day one, one shadowing session, and one small task they can finish and see used inside the first week.
Book the midpoint and the exit
Feedback halfway through while the term can still change, and a real conversation at the end about the work and about a return offer.
A paid intern is an employee, which means the same new hire paperwork as anyone else, and an onboarding checklist keeps week one from turning into a scramble on the morning they arrive.
Plan the exit at the same time you plan the start. A real conversation at the end of the term, built from a short list of intern exit interview questions, tells you what to fix before the next intern arrives and whether this one deserves an offer.
FirstHR connects the offer, the e-signature, the onboarding checklist, and the document storage in one place, so a small business can take an intern from a signed offer to a planned first week without a spreadsheet and four email threads. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a job board, so pair it with wherever you post. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Keep the Scorecards With the Hire
Store the signed offer, the interview scorecards, the work sample grades, and the school's credit paperwork together on the intern's profile rather than scattered across inboxes and desktops. It takes minutes during onboarding and saves an afternoon when the school asks for a supervisor sign-off at the end of the term, or when the same person applies for a full-time role a year later and you want to read what you actually wrote about them. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Key Takeaways
Assess interns on learning speed, ownership of recurring work, response to correction, and a schedule that survives being checked, rather than on skill they have not had a chance to build.
Screen on four facts in ten minutes first: exact term dates, realistic weekly hours, course credit requirements, and whether the posted rate works.
Ask the same ten core questions of every candidate in every department, then add four to six questions specific to the team the intern will join.
Give one short work sample on invented data, identical for everyone competing for the seat, graded against criteria written before the first submission.
Give the future supervisor a 20-minute block and a rating sheet, and have both interviewers score independently before either says a number out loud.
Rank the whole cohort on one sheet before calling anyone, then make offers in order with a response deadline a student can actually meet.
Frequently Asked Questions
What interview questions should you ask an intern?
Ask questions that need no employment history and still produce evidence. The ten that carry the most signal are: the last thing they finished that took more than a week, the most demanding person they have worked for, what they would do in the first hour of a task with no instructions, a time they had to tell someone in charge that something would be late, what part of the internship they expect to dislike, how they would get good at one recurring task by week four, which weeks of the term are already spoken for, feedback they disagreed with, what they want on their resume at the end, and who else is interviewing them. Attach a reason to each one before the interview so you are not inventing follow-ups live, then add four to six questions specific to the department. Score every candidate on the same rubric within ten minutes of the interview ending.
How do you interview an intern with no work experience?
Replace work history with three substitutes: multi-week coursework, unassigned side projects, and short situational questions. An intern candidate cannot answer walk me through your last role, but every one of them can describe a project that got boring in the middle, something they built that nobody asked for, or what they would do when a task arrives with no instructions and the supervisor is in meetings. Those answers are checkable in the same way a work history is, because you can ask what happened next until the detail runs out. A 30-minute work sample on invented data adds a second, independent read on the same candidate. What you are grading is learning speed, ownership, response to correction, and whether the schedule they describe survives being checked against a calendar.
How long should an intern interview be?
Budget a 10-minute phone screen and a 45 to 60 minute interview, and add a 20-minute block with the person who will supervise. The phone screen exists to settle four facts that a resume hides: exact term dates, realistic weekly hours, course credit requirements, and whether the posted rate works. Those four rule out more candidates than anything you would learn in an hour, and they take ten minutes. The main interview then covers ten core questions plus four to six department questions with room for follow-ups. The supervisor block is short on purpose, because its job is to test the fit between one specific candidate and one specific person’s week rather than to re-run the whole interview. Anything longer than that is a burden on a student who is also taking classes.
What questions can you not ask an intern in an interview?
Avoid anything that probes a protected characteristic: age, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy or family plans, disability, or genetic information. With student candidates the traps have their own shape. Asking when someone graduated high school is an age question, asking where they are originally from is a national origin question, and asking about a sorority, a fraternity, or a religious student group produces information you cannot lawfully use. You may ask whether a candidate can work the posted schedule for the full term, whether they can perform the tasks in the posting, and whether they are legally authorized to work in the United States, provided you ask that last one of every candidate in the same words. Document checks belong on Form I-9 after the hire, not in the interview. This is general information, not legal advice.
Should you give intern candidates a work sample or test?
Yes, if it is short, invented, and identical for every candidate competing for the seat. A 30-minute exercise on fictional data gives you an independent read on a candidate whose resume you cannot verify, and it often reorders a shortlist. Keep three rules. Cap the time and say the cap out loud, because a long take-home screens for free time rather than ability. Use an invented scenario, because the moment the output is something you would actually use, it stops being a test and starts being work that a for-profit business generally has to pay for. Write the grading criteria before you see the first submission. Grade the instructions followed, the output quality, whether they asked a clarifying question, the reasoning, and whether they finished inside the cap.
How many intern candidates should you interview per seat?
Five to eight full interviews per seat is a reasonable target for a small business, reached through a larger phone screen funnel. Internship postings pull volume, and resumes stop discriminating quickly because the coursework, the clubs, and the listed tools look nearly identical across the stack. The phone screen is what makes the volume manageable: ten minutes each, four facts settled, and only the candidates who clear the pass bar get an hour. Then rank the whole group on one sheet before you call anyone, because interns are usually hired as a cohort against a school deadline rather than one at a time. Call the first choice with a realistic response deadline, keep the number two warm in writing, and decline everyone else inside a week.
Can you ask an intern candidate about work authorization?
Yes, provided you ask every candidate the same question in the same words. Asking whether someone is legally authorized to work in the United States for the dates of the internship is job-related and neutral. What creates risk is asking it selectively, asking about citizenship status or national origin, or demanding specific documents during the interview. Document verification happens on Form I-9 after a hire, where the employee chooses which acceptable documents to present. International students on an F-1 visa typically need authorization arranged through their school before an internship begins, and that timeline can run several weeks, so it is worth raising during the phone screen rather than the week before the start date. This is general information, not legal advice.
What should you ask about an intern candidate’s schedule?
Ask for exact dates, an exact weekly number, the specific days, and which weeks are already spoken for. The most common way an internship fails is not skill, it is a schedule collision that nobody discussed in the interview: exam weeks, a second job, a family trip, or a heavier semester than expected. A candidate who volunteers the difficult weeks without being pushed is giving you a reliability signal that usually carries into everything else, while round numbers that shift each time you probe are a warning. Write the answers down and check them against a calendar. Then repeat them back in the offer letter, because dates and hours agreed out loud in an interview have a way of being remembered differently in month two.
