If your company uses internship programmes, internship exit interviews and internship exit interview questions are a great way to enrich those who intern with you.
Exit interviews are an ideal chance to get key insights into what your employees have gone through while working with you. With the right questions, you can get gain the richest feedback possible with reduced pressure from the exiting intern/employee.
What is an internship exit interview?
When an internship comes to a close, you might want to hold an interview before they leave to find out how the intern feels about their time with the organization.
This is known as an exit interview, and it’s ideal to hold it as close as possible to the intern’s last day.
As helpful as they are to your business, they’re also a good chance to enrich the intern’s time even more by giving them experience of an exit interview and having to reflect on their time with you.
This is essential for their careers moving forward, helping them learn how to appraise their own performance and think critically about their working environments.
You might also want to use the interview as a chance to invite the intern to join your alumni platform so that they can continue to follow the business and keep in touch with their colleagues. Click the link if you would like to learn more about best practices for exit interviews.
How do I prepare for an internship exit interview?
It’s best to think about what you hope interns will gain from working within your business. What internship exit questions should you ask?
With those qualities and experiences in mind, you can then build questions that probe for evidence of what the intern has learned and how they might even recommend improving the journey for future candidates.
Once you’ve got your questions ready and loaded, you can arrange the best time for the interview and go from there.
Internship exit interview questions – what not to ask
Remember that internships are more about work experience than anything else, so try not to get too serious with your internship exit interview questions.
You don’t want to ask an intern the same kind of questions you’d ask of a long-term employee, and you should focus more on their journey gaining skills and experience than anything to do with salary and employee satisfaction.
That’s not to say that interns can’t give some insight into these things, but it’s much more likely they’ll be comfortable talking about their experience as an intern.
Additionally, don’t use it as an opportunity to glean information that the intern might have overheard about others or complaints they might have been witness to.
Focus on them and their thoughts and ideas only.
Getting the most out of an internship exit interview
Using a corporate alumni management platform, you can help interns feel welcomed and included, which will yield richer insights and a much more open experience when conducting exit interviews.
Aluminate for Enterprise is your key to unlocking a happier, tighter community and yielding the wealth of benefits that come with a happy and cohesive culture that doesn’t suffer losses when people move on.
To find out more about our platform or arrange a demo, contact us today.
