Interview Question: Why should I hire you?

Interview Question: Why should I hire you?
July 29, 2009

Downloaded from http://cuberules.com/2009/07/29/interview-question-why-should-i-hire-you/ on July 31, 2009

Open-ended interview questions from hiring managers are great ways to solicit information from job applicants. What’s lousy about the open-ended questions, however, is when they are simply open-ended and not open-ended about the job. As a result, “Why should I hire you?” is a dangerous interview question. You have no context with which to orient your answer to what the hiring manager is looking for in the position. So your answer can be spot-on or wildly off base. Just what you want in an interview…

Start with your value to work; your personal brand. While each of us has done work that qualifies as a “position” — let’s say a nurse — each of us also brings particular skills to the job that differentiate us among nurses.

For example, my tag line is “rubber meets cloud.” I’m good at implementation of projects. I can see the high level of work and gateways and management intentions while being perfectly capable of getting into the weeds of the tasks with anyone to get the work done. That’s one of my special job skills that I bring to project management.

Or, my special skill as a manager is that I figure out how to get the best work out of each individual on my team. I have various ways of doing that, but I have a track record of getting teams working well together to get stuff done. You have that same unique set of skills for the work you do as well. It might be delivery, creativity, focus, problem solving, process fixing or a hundred other things. Use your personal brand to show value to the job description.

When you get asked an open-ended question about you rather than the job, the only criteria about the job you can fall back on is the job description. Consequently, before the job interview, you need to have already decided what value you bring to the major portions of the job description. You start with your personal brand values and then go through the job description and apply the values to the job. If the job description reads that the person needs to work in a fast-paced environment and one of your unique skills is your ability to quickly reorient your focus, you can build part of an answer to a “why should I hire you?” question based on the fact that you quickly change focus as the daily pace changes while still achieving your goals.
Having 2-3 of these “unique performance values” related to the “job description” will give you the cleanest way of beginning to answer the “why should I hire you?” question.

Scot Herrick

Avoid a Common Interview Pitfall

Avoid a Common Interview Pitfall
By Jessica Stillman
July 30th, 2009 @ 11:28 am

downloaded from www.bnet.online.com July 31,2009

Even if you’ve perfected your pitch and learned to summarize your accomplishments in a compelling and concrete way, interviews are not safe ground, especially for those who are relatively new to them. Interviewers have plenty of tricks up their sleeves, not least of which is questions seemingly designed expressly to trip you up. Putting aside the loathed “what are your weakness?” question, blog Cube Rules describes another type of interview question that seems to have no correct answer, calling these “forced choice questions” and giving examples:

· “What is more important to you, the money or the job?” Great, if I say “the money,” the hiring manager doesn’t think I’m motivated to do the work. If I answer with “the job,” the manager doesn’t think I’ll be upset with a smaller salary offer.

· “Do you prefer to work alone or with others?” Swell, I can like to work by myself and be thought of as a poor team player with no collaborative abilities, or else I work so well with others I can’t get anything done by myself.

Helpfully, Cube Rules also throws the floundering interviewee a life buoy, suggesting ways out of the bind. Perhaps the simplest solution is to says yes to both answers. For example, in response to the second question above, CR suggests a possible reply: “I like working alone when I need focus and productivity to complete my work. But I like working with people to brainstorm ideas, help get better solutions to problems and help others for what they need.” And if saying yes to all options doesn’t work? Then there is an alternative:

A second way to answer the forced choice is to pick a third option that isn’t presented by the interview question. “Do you work better with a manager that gives you free reign to complete your work the way you want or do you like being micromanaged to get your work done?”

For that type of question, you ignore both options presented and offer up a third alternative to answer this question. “I like a manager that provides clear direction, is open to seeing early versions of the work so we can make sure I’m on track, and to help clear obstacles that might prevent me from getting done.”