How to prepare for internship interviews?

A good internship can be a great leap in your career. You get to do a real job and get real opportunities to learn new skills with your dream internship.

Also, searching for great internships online and applying for them with your profile alone will not be enough. Like you, thousands of applicants will be trying to get that internship and make a career out of it.

But you can have the upper hand if you prepare well for the internship interviews forehand and know what to anticipate during the session.

So, I am suggesting some tips in this article which will be helpful for you to prepare for the internship interviews and face them confidently.

1. Be prepared physically and mentally: This might well be your first interview experience, so make sure that you are mentally prepared to face it. Don’t show any kind of resistance, be with an open mind and accept what you are and work your positives. Your body language matters a lot.


2. First impression is the best impression: Make sure that you impress the interviewer right from the start. Groom yourself neatly and be presentable and the interviewer should feel comfortable in talking to you. Greet them with a smile and show them that you are excited about this opportunity.


3. Showcase your skills & achievements: You need to first know about your skills so that you can emphasize on them during the interview. Identify all the skills that you have mastered and the achievements of your lifetime. Fabricate them accordingly and showcase it to the interviewer. Also neglect the skill or achievement that is completely irrelevant to the internship description.


4. Be a good listener: During your interview make sure that you listen to the interviewer very carefully and answer them. Never miss out on the details of the question as it may create an opinion that you are not good at listening and understanding. Once the interviewer finishes the question, take some time to analyse and come up with a relevant and logical answer.


5. Give your past-experience as examples: You might be lacking work experience to show it to your interviewer. You can compensate this by stating examples of your past-experience and telling them how it changed your perspective of things. This will make the interviewer realise that you learn from your past experiences and improve yourself, which is sure to impress them.


6. Show more confidence: Attitude matters a lot in your internship interview. You might be put to a stress test, where they want to test your patience and approach towards a problem when you are stressed. Be calm and composed throughout, try to analyse the situation and make yourself comfortable in front of the interviewers.


7. Do your groundwork: This is extremely important, as it shows the interviewer your seriousness about getting the internship. Before going for the interview, do some research about the company and understand their objectives and vision. You can simply go through the about-us page in their website and read some news articles to understand more about them. This will also come in handy while answering some challenging questions.

Some of the frequently asked internship interview questions are:

1. Tell me about yourself
2. What are your strengths?
3. What are your weakness?
4. What is your short-term and long-term goal?
5. Where do you see yourself in next five years?
6. Why we should offer you this internship?
7. What are your greatest achievements till now?
8. What do you know about our company?
9. Why do you think, this internship suits you?
10. How well do you work with other people?
11. Do you see this opportunity long-term?
12. Do you work better under pressure and deadlines?
13. What is more important- completing a job on time or doing it right?
14. Why do you want to join us?
15. Tell us about your managerial experience

What is the biggest doubt in interviewer’s mind?

Will this candidate learn and produce good output in the short duration of an internship.

Because if you fail, the company will lose all the investment of time and money they spent on you. Unlike job, this investment should give a return within the duration of your internship as you will leave them after that.

So the best way to prepare for an internship interview is to know how to make the interviewer feel that you can produce an output within the 2-3 months of an internship. You need to make him feel that you are a quick learner, you have hands-on experience and you can learn and implement it quickly.

So try to focus the interview on the hands-on experiences you had in the past. Show the interviewer about the projects you have done successfully, talk about challenges you faced and how you solved them.

If you have not built any projects so far, start doing it now. This is the biggest thing that has an impact on your internship recruitment. If you have built some projects, great. Build more!

All the best for your internship interview!

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