Questions to ask in an internship interview

Why this part is scored

Your questions reveal what you have been paying attention to. An interviewer can tell the difference between someone who read the job description that morning and someone who has thought about what the work involves. Three good questions is plenty; the goal is not volume.

Questions about the actual work

• What would my project be, and does it ship? The single most useful question. Internships range from real work to invented busywork, and this question separates them quickly.
• Who would I be working with day to day? You are finding out whether you get a dedicated mentor or whether you will be a shared responsibility that nobody owns.
• What does a normal week look like - how much is coding versus meetings and reviews?
• What does the codebase look like for someone arriving with no context?

Questions about how you will be supported

• How do interns get feedback, and how often? Ten weeks is short enough that feedback at week eight is useless.
• What does a successful internship look like here? You are asking for the rubric. Most interviewers will give it to you.
• What do interns usually find hardest in the first two weeks? Reliably produces an honest answer, because it invites a specific memory rather than a pitch.

Questions about what happens afterwards

• Do interns typically get return offers, and when are those decided? Entirely reasonable to ask, and the timing half is genuinely useful.
• What have past interns gone on to do here?

Ask these in the later rounds or with the hiring manager rather than in a first screen, where they can read as skipping ahead.

Questions for the engineer, not the manager

If you are talking to someone who would be a peer, ask peer questions. They are usually more candid than anyone else you will speak to:

• What is something you wish you had known before joining?
• What is the most annoying part of the development workflow here?
• What are you working on at the moment?

The ones that cost you

• Anything answered on the careers page. Reads as not having looked.
• "What does the company do?" Ends the interview badly, and there is no recovery.
• Compensation and benefits in a first-round screen. Legitimate questions, wrong moment - take them to the recruiter.
• "How did I do?" Puts the interviewer in an awkward position and gets you a non-answer.
• No questions at all. The most common error, and it is read as disinterest even when you are simply nervous or the interview ran long.

Prepare five, expect two or three to be answered during the conversation, and ask what is left. The question sets you will face before this point are in software engineer intern interview questions.

Where CoPilot Interview fits

Disclosure: we build an interview assistant, so treat this as a disclosed pitch. CoPilot Interview is a native Windows and macOS app that puts suggested answers on your own screen in about four seconds during live rounds, with a permanent free tier that needs no credit card. The closing questions, though, are worth preparing yourself - they are specific to the company and to what you actually want out of the summer.

Frequently asked questions

What questions should I ask at the end of an internship interview?

Three is plenty. The most useful is what your project would be and whether it ships, since that separates real internships from invented busywork. Follow with who you would work with day to day and how interns get feedback during the ten weeks.

Is it bad to ask about return offers in an internship interview?

No, as long as the timing is right. Ask it in a later round or with the hiring manager rather than in a first recruiter screen. Asking when return decisions are made is particularly useful and entirely reasonable.

What questions should I avoid asking?

Anything answered on the careers page, compensation in a first-round screen, and asking how you did. The worst option is asking nothing at all, which is read as disinterest even when you are simply nervous or the interview has run long.

How many questions should I prepare?

Prepare five and expect two or three to be answered naturally during the conversation. That leaves you two to ask at the end, which is the right number for the time usually available.