30+ Internal Interview Questions To Ask Applicants (+ Interviewing Best Practices)

As you probably know, internal candidates often make an excellent fit for an open position. It is because the advantages of promoting from within are clear and compelling:

Internal candidates (your existing employees) already have a deep understanding of your company’s operations and have built relationships with other employees. This familiarity gives them a significant head start over external hires. 

But here’s where things get interesting – interviewing internal candidates presents some unique challenges. How do you objectively evaluate someone you may already know well? What questions will truly uncover their potential for a new role within your organization?

We have compiled this guide to help you navigate internal hiring successfully. You’ll find over 30  internal interview questions and offers some handy tips to ensure a fair and productive hiring process. 

30+ Internal Interview Questions to Spot Your In-house Star(s)

When conducting internal interviews, it’s essential to go beyond standard questions to truly understand a candidate’s fit within the organization. Here are some questions to help you hire the next best candidate.

Motivational Interview Questions

These questions help identify what drives a candidate in their professional journey. They delve into a person’s internal motivators, such as a passion for their work and the values they hold. The aim is to understand how they seek to grow within the organization in the long run.

Asking motivational questions is very important in an internal interview. It can help you decipher whether the candidate’s personal ambitions match the company’s direction. Ultimately, an individual who is already internally motivated is more likely to be productive and committed to their new role. 

Here are the top motivational interview questions you can ask an internal candidate – 

1. Why are you interested in this new role within our company?
2. What experience within our company has prepared you to assume a new role?
3. Should you not be selected for this role, how do you think it will affect your current role?
4. What’s your favorite part of coming to work every day?
5. What could change about our company/department to make it a better experience?
6. What do you enjoy / not enjoy about your current job?
7. If you could change one thing about your current role, what would it be?

Management and Growth Potential Interview Questions

These questions assess a candidate’s readiness and desire to take on more significant responsibilities. They probe further into the candidate’s leadership experiences in the current job. Such questions also assess whether the candidates were able to mentor others.

In an internal interview, these questions are key because they help in succession planning. In other words, they can identify employees who can grow into larger roles or lead teams effectively. This, in turn, enables you to invest in their development, ensuring a strong leadership pipeline.

Here are the top management and growth potential questions you can ask an internal candidate

1. In your current role, I heard that you managed Project <project name>. Tell me about this project. 
2. In your current role, have you been in any situations where you would be described as a leader? 
3. If promoted to this new role, what would your ideal team structure be? 
4. How would your peers describe your management style?
5. What are the traits you think are most important to be a good manager/leader?
6. At this stage of your career, where do you see yourself next year? Three years from now? Five years?
7. Which areas do you think you will improve the most in your next role?

Communication-Related Questions

These questions assess how well a candidate can convey ideas and listen to others. The main goal is to understand how effectively the candidate can interact across various levels of the organization and in different contexts.

Communication skills are especially important if the employee is moving into a role that requires more complex interactions. Strong communicators are better equipped to navigate organizational dynamics. They will also ensure the projects run smoothly, regardless of their role. 

Here are the top communication-related questions you can ask an internal candidate

1. Which members of your department did you work with directly? What was the scope of the work? 
2. Have you ever worked across departments at our company? Explain
3. Have you ever had any communication issues with anyone on the team? 
4. Were you ever given any unclear directions for tasks/projects? What steps did you take to ensure you were doing the correct work to the specifications of the project?
5. How would your peers describe your communication style?
6. Tell me about a project that did not go smoothly. What were the issues? How did you address these with the team, peer, or candidate’s current supervisor? 
7. What did you think was the key to working smoothly with your current team successfully?

Performance in the Earlier Roles

These questions focus on the candidate’s past achievements and how they handled previous responsibilities within the organization. The answers give you a better picture of how the candidate rates their own performance. 

This will give you an additional point of view from the information you received from their managers. 

Pssst! With performance management software like Peoplebox, you can get a 360°view of the candidate’s performance within seconds. Don’t believe us? Try it yourself!

Performance-related questions are important in an internal interview because they clearly indicate how likely the candidate is to perform in their new role. They also help confirm whether the candidates have the right skill set and experience to succeed in a different role.

Here are the top performance-related questions you can ask an internal candidate: 

1. I’ve heard you worked on project X with [name]. Can you tell me about this project? What do you think were the main reasons for its success?
2. You missed a couple of project deadlines during X. What were the reasons for this?
3. What was the most challenging project that you’ve worked on with our company? What specifically was challenging? How do you think the project could have been run to make it less difficult?
4. Please describe your favorite project that you’ve been a part of at our company. What made this project great? Was it successful? If you could go back in time, is there anything you would change about your contribution?
5. Do you think your peers would have anything negative to say about your work? Which projects in particular do you think you could have done better in hindsight?
6. What do you think are the areas in which you have grown the most during your tenure at our company? 
7. What have you done to contribute to the company’s goals?

Expectations From New Roles

These questions are mainly asked to confirm the candidate’s expectations related to responsibilities and growth prospects about the role align with what the role actually entails. 

The answers to these questions can quickly identify any gaps in a candidate’s understanding and fill them to avoid later misunderstandings. 

Expectations-related questions are important to ensure that the candidates know what they are signing up for and that there are no surprises later. Misaligned expectations can lead to dissatisfaction, underperformance, or, worse, resignation of the employees.

Here are the top expectations-related questions you can ask an internal candidate

1. What challenges do you anticipate in this new role, and how do you plan to overcome them?
2. Have you spoken about the position with your current manager? If so, what did they say?
3. What would you do to help your replacement should you move on to this position?
4. What do you believe are the most important qualities for this new position?
5. What is something you have learned from your current position that you will apply to this new role?

What are the Best Practices to Follow While Asking Internal Interview Questions?

Here are some tips and best practices you can adopt while interviewing internal candidates for a role in your organization: 

1. Before the interview, review the candidate’s past work and achievements. Also, gather detailed feedback from peers or managers. This helps in framing the right questions and making a well-informed decision. 
2. Throughout the interview, stay objective. Do not let personal relationships influence your judgment. Treat the interview as if you’re assessing an external candidate.
3. Encourage candidates to ask questions. Give them clarity on the new role’s responsibilities. The candidate should understand the expectations before expressing any interest to proceed further.
4. Explain the next steps at the end. Set expectations and give information about potential timelines for making the final hiring decision. 
5. Create an open line of communication once the interview is over. Let candidates know they can follow up. This reassures them and encourages ongoing engagement.
6. Just because the candidate knows the company, don’t assume the candidate knows about the role, too. Fill in all the knowledge gaps during the interview.
7. Ensure the candidate’s application and responses remain confidential. This will protect their privacy and maintain trust within the organization.
8. Offer constructive feedback on the candidate’s performance, even if they are not selected for the role. Not sure how to give constructive feedback that makes a difference? Our ebook can help!

🥨 How Can Peoplebox Help?

Peoplebox is an employee engagement platform that offers a centralized system for managing employee data, performance reviews, and feedback. 

An invaluable tool for HR and recruitment teams, Peoplebox ensures that anyone with permission can access details like performance history and feedback from peers and managers before an internal interview. This also eliminates the need to juggle multiple tools and spreadsheets.

Secondly, Peoplebox makes it easy to evaluate candidates objectively. For instance, you get a clear view of historical performance, including the candidate’s strengths and areas for improvement. This helps you make informed decisions during the internal interview. Such an objective approach minimizes bias and allows internal candidates to be assessed fairly.

Thirdly, Peoplebox can be integrated with your organization’s designated communication tools, such as Slack and Microsoft. This gives you an excellent platform to communicate with your internal candidates, right from scheduling the actual interview to announcing the results of their interview. 

Ready to experience the Peoplebox difference? Get in touch with us today!