Interview Questions From Intern Employers

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The Interview Questions Asked by Top Internship Companies

Here you are. Shoes shined. Pants pressed. Smile sheened. This is the big moment. Sure, it was a big deal to be accepted into business school. But this interview is for a summer internship. And you know what’s at stake. Getting into the right company is the hard part.

Once you’re hired, you just need to be yourself and perform…no different than what you did before business school. At your internship, you network with the right people, ask good questions, show passion, and produce some results and you’re in. It’s no secret: companies prefer to hire from their intern pool. They’re proven commodities. An internship is just a two month job interview. Land an offer in August and you’re set for second year.

Before that, you need to answer a few questions. And they may not be what you prepared for. Chances are, you read an employer’s press clippings and career section on the web. You’ve probably networked with some employees. If you’re really ambitious, you may have run through a mock interview with career services. Thanks to your business school application, you can rattle off several stories and quantifiable accomplishments. But an internship interview covers far more than ‘what have you done’ and ‘what do you bring.’ They also test how you’d approach problems and why you’d make certain decisions. In other words, they simulate real world situations. And what’s a best practice in one culture is a faux pas in another.

So what types of questions can you expect? As part of its annual internship survey, Vault compiled a list of 101 interview questions from students who interviewed for internships. Alas, questions can vary by industry, culture, interviewer, or role. But if you’re wondering what types of questions to expect beyond the usual fare, check out this sampling below.

If you had to describe yourself as a brand, which brand would you choose and why?

Talk about your leadership style in the past and how you lead now.

What quality do you most like to see in a team member?

If you had a problem with a coworker, how would you solve it?

Describe a time where you had to correct someone’s actions by showing them howto do a task in a better way.

Walk me through how a client meeting should go.

Tell me about a time when everyone on the team was against your opinion as a leader and how you handled it.

Tell me about a time you failed, what you learned from it, and how you would act differently if you encountered something similar again.

Talk about a time when you went against policy to do what you felt was morally right. 

Talk about a time you had to settle a dispute between two people.

What would you do if a PowerPoint presentation you or your team was giving included a mistake, but you didn’t know until the last minute?

Tell me about a time you had to break a promise. What was the situation and how did you handle it?

If you found yourself sitting at a desk, bored, what would you do?

What gets you up in the mornings?

Where do you think our industry is going? What are the general trends within it?

What is the biggest problem our firm is facing?

When were you most creative?

Please describe your perfect work environment.

Describe a past experience where you met a whole new group of people and how you bonded with them.

Tell me a joke.

If you could choose just one, what would your superpower be?

To read the full list, click on the Vault link below.

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Source: Vault