Young people, typically, don’t have a lot of work experience to talk about in an interview. To get a good sense of who they are, what they can bring to a role and company and how they get on with other people, you will need to help them communicate the skills they have acquired from school, home or their community by tailoring the interview process to draw the best out of them.

In this article, we'll compare the questions you might ordinarily ask a candidate in an interview and look at how you can adjust these for a young person.

What attracted you to this job?

A young person new to interviews might not know how to answer this in a way that plays to their strengths. We recommend that you offer some additional questions, or prompts, to help them answer it, such as: 

• “What stood out to you in the job advertisement that made you think ‘I could do that’?” 

• “Did something particular about the company appeal to you?” 

How could I support you in your professional development? 

Try rewording this question to “what kind of things would you like to learn in this role?” 

What is your weakness? 

This is a hard question to answer, even for the most experienced interviewee. We suggest working this question in within a conversation around professional development, with questions such as: 

• “Is there anything you think you might need some help with in this role in which you don’t have experience yet?” 

• “Was there anything on our job advertisement that seemed like it might be a challenge for you, which might require some help or training?” 

• "What do you often find most difficult when learning something new?"

What are you passionate about? 

This  question format has the potential for one-word answers, such as “rugby”, “church” or “Instagram”, so, to help you learn more about them and get a fuller idea of what they enjoy doing, take their answer and draw upon it: 

Rugby: “Did you enjoy being a part of a team?” 

Church: “Were you involved with any church events, organising or volunteering for them?” 

Instagram: “How do you think marketing on Instagram could work for our company?” 

Tell me about a problem you have had and what you did to resolve it?

This question is typically asked to see how a candidate has handled a problem in the past and is likely to handle it again, in future. As young people are unlikely to have work-related examples of problems, you might need to reword the question. For example: 

• “Tell me about your transition between high school and university – what did you do to adapt to the challenges of the new environment/timetable/teaching style?” 

• “Tell me about a time when you’ve had to ‘change tactics’ and try a new approach because something wasn’t working anymore, for instance a school project or assignment. What were the results? What would you do differently if you had the chance to do it again?"

What are your salary expectations? 

This is another difficult question, even for seasoned workers. A young person is unlikely to know the correct answer to this or feel comfortable answering it. They will probably fear that answering incorrectly will take them out of consideration. 

To make things easier from the get-go, we would recommend stating the salary in the job advertisement for entry-level positions. If you do need to talk about pay during the interview, bring it up by saying “salaries for this position are typically between X and Y, so based on your experience and ability to do the role, do you think that this is fair?” 

Some other great questions are: 

• "Who is one of your role models and why?"

• "How would your friends describe you?"

• "How has your family or school life prepared you for going out into the workforce?" (i.e. are you relied on to take  responsibility for something in the family, such as looking after younger siblings? Or managing the shopping budgets? Did you lead a movement in your school to allow girls to wear shorts instead of skirts?)