3 Tips to Structure Your Answer Question of Why Should We Hire You?
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Why should we hire you? Why are you the best candidate for this position? What makes you a good fit for this role? If you’re looking for work you’ll no doubt get asked an interview question like this, and getting the job offer could hinge on. How well you answer this question in this article, I’ll give you three tips to structure your answer to this question with confidence and impress your potential for a new employer.
There are three reasons employers ask this type of question, one is to learn how genuinely interested you are in the position and working for them. Two is to find out how well you know yourself and believe in yourself, how confident you are in being the right fit for this question, and three to compare how you stand out against other candidates, so this means this your chance to really sell yourself. You need to demonstrate what makes you uniquely qualified for this position, and how you stand out from other candidates. You need to formulate your answer in a way that demonstrates your passion and fit for the role and the alignment of your personal values. What’s most important to you with the company’s mission, vision, and values? This shows you’ve truly done your research.
Remember getting the job is not just about you getting a job; it’s about ensuring that the position team and company are the right fit for you. As much as the employer wants to know that you are the right fit for their company team and the position. This is your career we’re talking about so, it needs to be mutually beneficial right.
Research the company
So, tip number one is to research the company, find out what the company’s goals are their mission, vision, values, culture, and philosophies. How do they value their employees, their clients? What’s important to them? What are they struggling with? And what are they striving to achieve in the future? Don’t stop at only researching their websites, do a Google search on them. Find out what they’ve been up to in the media recently, review employee, and customer ratings to learn customer satisfaction levels, and identify areas of improvement. Find out what their current and past employees have to say, you can also reach out to current, and past employees through social media, such as LinkedIn and Facebook to ask questions about their experiences working for the company. Ask what is valued most in its employees? What are the biggest challenges the company and our department are facing recently? Look for patterns of common themes, and potential problems, that you can help solve if hired. Keep in mind, it’s not just about you being qualified for the role, you’re going to need to demonstrate how you fit with the company’s culture, and the team culture. Do some sleuthing on the hiring manager aka your future boss and try to find out something about them that you can relate to, and perhaps incorporate into your answer. Keep in mind people hire people so when you can find a commonality or something that generates camaraderie between you, and your potential new boss that could make the difference between them choosing you or another candidate.
Remember what I said earlier, this is about selling yourself so, you need to gather all the reasons as to why you are the best fit and why they should choose to hire you above all other candidates. You want to avoid saying things like, “You should hire me because I have the skills and experience you’re looking for” that’s obvious. You wouldn’t be in the interview stage if didn’t would you, you don’t want to say things like, “I’m loyal, trustworthy, hard-working” these are weak statements all employees are expected to be loyal trustworthy, and hard-working. So, while you are all of those things so why are the other candidates. So, you aren’t making yourself stand out by describing yourself this way, you also don’t want to say because I think would be a good fit that’s not a strong enough answer.
Demonstrate your fit
Tip numbers two demonstrate your fit, highlight your strengths, and relevant skills, and expertise that match the position. Did you hear me say relevant, this is where a lot of candidates go wrong; they talk about what they see as their greatest strengths overall, but they may not be the ones most specifically related to this job.
What are your superpowers? What makes you unique and particularly great at your job? Are you resourceful? Are you an exceptional problem solver? Do you see the things that no one else notices? Do you take on challenges that no one else wants to deal with? What are you the subject matter expert on in your current role? What do people come to you for help on? Review the job description and pick out three or four skills and responsibilities. That is key to being successful in the position, and then talk about your strengths related to those skills and give examples that showcase those strengths.
You want to demonstrate how you stand out from other candidates let’s say, for example, you’re applying for a role that involves managing a team, and the job description mentions strong communication, team building, and leadership skills. You might say one of your greatest strengths is that you’re a proactive communicator which means instead of waiting for staff to come to you when there’s a problem; you proactively reach out to them. You could then give a story example that demonstrates that strength such as, when you started your past job you discovered that team morale was low, you took the time to get to know each staff member. Learned what their struggles and frustrations were and then describe the plan that you made, and the steps that you took to resolve those frustrations, resulting in improved morale. You will need to explain it with some what, why, how, and the outcome. What was the issue? Why it was an issue? How did you go about fixing it? And what was the result? It is very similar to the tsar technique for answering behavioral-based questions.
Also, when you’re crafting your answer, you want to mention what you’re passionate about in relation to the position? What excites you about the company, the team, or the role? When we talk about things we’re passionate about, our face lights up, which validates our sincerity and enthusiasm, and we’ll come across positively to the interviewers.
Practice your answers
Tip number three, practice your answers. If you’re really wanted to succeed, in impressing your interviewers and answering this question with confidence, you need to do your research. Prepare your answer in advance and practice it for days If, not weeks before your interview.
Here is my hot tip for you, everyone gets nervous in interviews so, one way to structure your answer and make it easier to remember what you want to say is to come up with five main reasons, and then count them off. So, you’d start by saying something like, “Well, I have five main reasons” and then list each of them incorporating what I just talked about, demonstrating the research you’ve done, your passion for the role, and industry, and examples showcasing your superpowers. Now, let me give you a short sample answer to the question of why should we hire you?
“ABC is the type of company where I could maximize my contribution. I can contribute an excellent working knowledge of safety products, and supply, superior presentation skills, and excellent post-sales follow-up discipline. An example of my post-sales follow-up procedure at my last company was that I always called my customers 3 days after the sale to ensure their satisfaction, and then made it a point to call them every 2 months thereafter to ensure their continued satisfaction. My persistent follow-up effort resulted in repeat business from 3 major customers totaling $3.1 Million in additional revenues last year. I read in the XYZ news that your company is recognized for holding monthly, “give back” days where employees spend the day at local charities and community programs providing a day of free services, such as serving food at shelters, doing graffiti removal, visiting senior homes. That kind of integrity in a company really makes me want to be a part of it.”
You’ll notice this answer demonstrated several key strengths, industry product knowledge presentation skills, and post-sales follow-up, an example of post-sales follow-up then given showing the action they took and resulted in 3.2 million in additional revenues. It then explains research they did and what they discovered that was meaningful to them as well as a standout example of why they are passionate about wanting to work there.
I hope these tips help you formulate a knock them out of the park answer when you’re asked why should we hire you? Why are you the best candidate for this position? Or what makes you a good fit for this role?