Hiring managers share their insights on how to answer "Why should we hire you?" in job interviews

“Why should we hire you?” interview question is one that many job seekers struggle with. What does the employer really want to know? How to answer this question to really sell yourself as an ideal candidate for the role?

If you’re like many other job seekers, you might be feeling quite anxious – you really want the job, but how do you make yourself stand out from others? It’s a competitive market out there. You’re smart and can do the job, but how do you demonstrate this to the prospective employer?

Information in this article has been sourced from experts – hiring managers with extensive management and interviewing experience. While there is a lot of advice on the Internet, not much of it has been sourced from people actually doing the hiring. 

Employers phrase "Why should we hire you?" in many different ways. They can ask you what you can bring to the role, why you’re suitable or why they should hire you over someone else’s.

Your answer should make it clear that you can do the work and deliver great results and that you’ll be a great addition to the team. Also, that hiring you will make the hiring manager look good and make their life easier.

The first step to answering an ambiguous question successfully is figuring out what the interviewer wants to know by asking it.

For that reason, we’ve asked a number of hiring managers and recruiting to tell us the questions contained within the question.

Chris Dodge, Head Teacher from The Wells Free School has over 20 years of experience in Education and has hired in excess of 50 teachers. When Chris advertises for a job, he’d expect the candidates to look at what they’ve identified as being essential skills and he’d expect successful candidates to reference as much as possible how their own skill set matches the school’s requirements. He doesn’t want a generic answer – instead he is expecting the candidate to give a specific answer to this question and refer to something they’ve read on the school’s website.

How to prepare your answer to "Why should we hire you?"

Identify the skills required by the employer & the skills you possess

• Find the required skills in the job ad and list them
• Identify the personality traits required by the employer. These can include integrity, working well with others or eagerness to learn
• Analyse the skills you possess gained in your past job or volunteering experience
• Make some notes on how you’ve displayed these traits in your professional life, as it would be useful to have these examples ready for the interview

Identify your USPs (unique selling points)

• Identify your strongest skills. If you’re struggling with that, ask a trusted colleague or check your previous performance reviews
• Back up your answers with examples. For each of your strongest skills, identify examples that demonstrate your possession of that skill. Anyone can say they have great organisational or management skills, but how do you prove it to the employer?

For example, if you’ve identified your organisational skills as one of your strongest skills, you can demonstrate that you are well organised by saying that in the last year you’ve organised 10 events with up to 200 participants each and they’ve all received 90%+ satisfaction score.

If you work in retail for example - everyone will have experience in customer service, that in itself won’t make you stand out. But if you’ve expanded customer base by 30% in the first three months of the year or have increased the sales by 5k per week, these are the achievements the employer will remember. 

In general, these are the things that will make you stand out from others:

• Revenue or sales you increased for the company.
• Money/time you saved for the company.
• Problems you identified and solved.
• Ideas or innovations you introduced and implemented.
• Procedures or systems you developed and implemented.

Tailor your answer to the role you’re applying for

• You probably have many skills you’ve developed over the years, but there is no point talking about skills you have that are not relevant to the job you’re interviewing for. 
• Pick 4-5 skills listed in the job description that you can prove you have by practising your stories and examples in advance.

How to answer "Why should we hire you?"

This answer should be no more than a couple of minutes. During this time you need to communicate that you have the skills they need, a track record of success, that you’re a good cultural fit and that you’re genuinely interested in this job and the employer.

Chris Dodge, Head Teacher from The Wells Free School has over 20 years of experience in Education and has hired in excess of 50 teachers. When Chris advertises for a job, he’d expect the candidates to look at what they’ve identified as being essential skills and he’d expect successful candidates to reference as much as possible how their own skill set matches the school’s requirements. He doesn’t want a generic answer – instead he is expecting the candidate to give a specific answer to this question and refer to something they’ve read on the school’s website.

Tom Curtis, Head of Year at Canons High School, doesn’t always ask “Why should we hire you?” question directly, and instead he wants to know what the candidate’s proudest moment was. He wants to know what the candidate values and what they are passionate about. He also asks what makes a good lesson or what makes an outstanding teacher.

In teaching interviews, there is always a lesson observation and in the interview afterwards they always ask, “How did you feel the lesson went?”

They might also ask:

“What would you do if a member of your team was under performing?”

“Can you give me an example of a time when you have faced opposition to an idea or proposal?

In these questions you are checking pedagogy knowledge (strategies to improve teaching and learning) and subject knowledge but in the main pedagogical expertise, for example, use of questioning, challenging the more able.

Tom says he is a big fan of subject knowledge and passion for the area they are teaching in. The pedagogy aspects can be taught and improved over time but subject knowledge and passion for the subject are really essential. Everyone likes different bits of the subject so the story behind it is fascinating and draws him in as he knows they will be able to transfer their love/passion of the subject to students improving engagement and outcomes as a result. 

It’s important you mention specific results. One of the biggest mistakes candidates make is answering this question in a very generic way that doesn’t make them stand out from other candidates e.g. “I have relevant experience and I am hard working.”

Focus not just on what you’ve done but on the impact of what you’ve done and the results.

Rahma Javed Rahma Javed, Director of Engineering at Deliveroo who is managing a team of 30 says it’s important the candidate can show how they’ve made an impact and that they can communicate effectively as well. Often engineers think that if they are good at programming, they won’t need to communicate. Software engineers often have to solve a problem so they have to be able to work with key stakeholders to see what the actual problem was. There is no perfect way to figure out the problem. Are you optimising for time, speed, efficiency, product market fit? She’d expect the successful candidate to provide specific examples of how they’ve made an impact.

For example, for a software engineering role, you could mention you’ve improved database load times 5x by implementing incremental update process (this demonstrates a desire for efficiency and proves you have the skills to make it happen). Or you could talk about a system you’ve created which enables you to do things more simply and efficiently (this translated to money saved which is always seen as a positive).

You need to be clear on what specifically you can bring to the role even if the interviewer doesn’t explicitly ask “Why should we hire you?” question.

Chris Dodge from The Wells Free School doesn’t always ask “Why should we hire you?” – but this is gradually unpicked at the interview, which is one of the reasons the preparation is so important. Chris says that for experienced teachers, they want to see what impact they’ve had at previous schools. What have they changed? What is their philosophy about good teaching? What impact did it have on children’s well-being and learning?

Tom Curtis from Canons High School also says candidates need to talk about successes whether it is progress added, impact on behaviour, schemes of work. Failure to talk about successes will leave the school with questions about the teacher’s quality.

Ajay Lakhani, Engineering Manager at Expedia Group is managing a team of 30 in India, Hungary, Jordan and Bellevue. He would also expect the candidate to talk about their wins and what they’ve done in the team but he doesn’t want someone who brags as if nothing would have happened without them. 

Body language is very important, too. He wants to see someone leaning forward, interested in what Ajay is trying to say, not appearing superior – which happens in candidates for more senior roles.

One favourite question is “Can you tell me of a time when you were proud of what you’ve achieved?”

He’d expect the candidate to show they understand the job, show the passion and show they are someone who can adapt and learn. The favourite interviews are when someone is not only very strong technically but very humble and can challenge the interviewer technically.

You also need to communicate that you’re a good cultural fit. Hiring managers are looking for someone who will not only have the technical skills to do the job but who will fit into the culture of the company. 

Rahma Javed from Deliveroo confirms it is very important that there is a good fit for both sides. When interviewing engineers apart from asking technical and behavioural questions, she also wants to understand the candidate’s motivations. Why are they interested in the opportunity, why are they leaving the previous opportunity (they might have the same reasons here!)

At Deliveroo, they assess the fit in different behavioural questions and they have the whole cultural assessment, different for each level. 

A candidate who is likely to get hired has enthusiasm for the technology, what they do, and their personal goals align with the company’s goals and motivations.They need to show they are motivated to take ownership and solve problems.

Ajay Lakhani from Expedia Group uses guiding principles at Expedia “be honest, humble, customer focused, have positive intent, and to be data driven” to establish the candidate’s cultural fit.

The questions are open ended, and it is about the way the candidate answers. He’d look at the language – is it “I”, “me” – or is it “we”, and “the team and how we work as part of a team”?

Andrew Watters, Senior Engineering Manager from Booking.com who leads 4 teams asks a number of different questions to establish if a candidate would be a good fit. Once the candidate has passed the technical test, he’d ask them some scenario based questions e.g. about someone they’ve worked with who was difficult to work with and how they’ve handled it and what they’ve learnt from it. A perfect answer for him would depend on the level of the person he is looking for and would demonstrate awareness of context (that’s why it’s so important to do the research we’ve talked about earlier), their ability to respond to context, consider different aspect of the problem and to demonstrate how persistent they are and where they’ve failed. He’d look for a person who can reflect on their learning also when they’ve failed.

Another hiring manager I spoke to, Yuan Shao, Senior Manager, Software Engineering at Canon who has 15 years of management experience and 20 people in his team asks “Why should we hire you?” question to see how the candidate communicates and why they think they’d be a good fit. They’d have already checked the candidate is technically strong, but it’s important to Yuan that the candidate is able to communicate with the team and with stakeholders effectively and that they can describe why they’d fit the culture at Canon. Yuan will also ask about their most recent projects, or why they’ve chosen Java instead of something else, but it’s more about how this person describes their skills. Nobody knows everything so if you don’t know the answer, be honest, and don’t try to make up an answer.

Tips for Giving the Best Answer

Demonstrate how you will add value. For each qualification or strength that you’ve identified, think of a specific time where you used that skills or trait to achieve something. What other experience or skills have you got that would help you to make an impact in the role you’re interviewing for? 

Keep your response short and focused. Your answer should be brief. Review the job description again and decide which qualifications the employer is looking for and that you have would add the greatest business value.

Tell a story. For every skill you possess, be prepared to share a brief story that illustrates how you’ve effectively used that skill in previous jobs.  in a previous work experience. Your answer should be no longer than 1-2 minutes long.

Remember, focus on your most compelling selling points and keep in mind that what the hiring managers want to know is what you can bring to the role/business if they hire you.