Why Are You a Good Fit for this Role: 

Many people make the mistake of thinking why are you a good fit for this role Questions should only focus on what you bring to the table. Well, that is certainly a part of it. We’ll see in this article that adding an honest, selfish element to your answer, will help you come off as more genuine and memorable. So let’s get started. such as why should we hire you. And what makes you a good candidate? But they’re all trying to uncover the same three things.

Number one, what can you bring to the role?

Number one, what can you bring to the role?

Number two, what you are trying to get out of it?

And number three, what makes you unique?

You should address all three of these underlying questions, but you want to make sure your answer is structured with the right proportions as well. In my experience, 50% of your answer should be dedicated to one. 30 percent of the time spent on two, and the remaining 20% left for three. Let’s start breaking each one of these down. Starting with the first part of your answer, what can you bring to the role?

You want to spend the most time on this part because this is where you get to match a strength of yours to the job requirement. In other words, your value proposition. First, you want to do some research, and this is where it gets interesting. A small trick I like to use when reading through the job description is to copy and paste all the text into a free word cloud generator to see which words or phrases come up the most frequently. While the job description doesn’t usually paint a complete picture of the role, this gives you a great starting point to see which one of your experiences is most relevant.

. For the next step, if you already have experience in the area you have identified, perfect. Mention how the new role represents a new challenge for you and how you’re looking to further grow your expertise in that particular field. If on the other hand, you are a fresh grad or working professional looking to move to another industry altogether, you want to highlight relevant attributes that are transferable to the new role. In other words, if you have relevant work experience, double down on it. If you don’t, mention skills you have developed that will help you succeed in the new position. Finally, because 50% of your answer is allocated to this first part, you can have a full story prepared using the star format. If you’re not familiar with Star or need a quick refresher, feel free to check out my behavioral interview video linked down below. So for example, let’s say I’m applying for a position at Tesla and not because of their latest stock price or anything. The job post on LinkedIn is that of a manager position and their global operations team.

For me, my supply chain experience is limited to tracking my package on Amazon. So that’s not an area I can speak to. But I do manage a team and I do optimize a lot of internal processes in my current role as a B2B product marketer. So my answer, I probably highlight my leadership abilities and give examples of internal processes I work on right now and how those experiences might apply to this new role. If you found this first part helpful, drop a like and comment down below or whether the word cloud tip is something you’re planning to use.

What do you want from this role?

On to the second part of your answer. What do you want to take away from this role? Many candidates are hesitant to say what they want to get out of the job because they think the answer should just be about pitching themselves to the company. But the thing is, by saying what you are selfishly looking for, not only does it help you come up as more authentic, but it shows the interviewer that you have done the research. Because otherwise, you wouldn’t know about the specifics in the first place. For example, when I was interviewing for my initial role at Google, the account manager position in the sales team, I specifically mentioned how I get a rush from seeing my clients immediately adopt my recommendations in their Google Ads accounts. This was a big deal for me because of my previous management consulting position, it took weeks or even months to see the fruits of my labor. But in a sales position at Google, I saw it almost immediately. Short-term dopamine addiction aside, my answer showed the hiring manager that number one, Jeff is pretty results driven, since he’s excited about the impact that he’s made. Number two, Jeff has researched to know that part of the job revolves around the Google Ads platform and number three, he is a genuine person for admitting part of the reason he’s applying is for the dopamine hit that he gets. If you’re having trouble with this part, it’s helpful to think about the ideal end result if you were to get the job. What would happen if you did the job really well? Would you feel some personal satisfaction like I do? Would you be able to further grow in your area of expertise? Would you be able to build connections in a space that you were unable to before? For example, I know some legal counsels who start off in corporate law, that went on to join tech companies because they want a more practical experience with the laws regulating the Internet and technology space. Final tip for this part is to find someone working in the role that you’re applying for, and asking them whether they’re happy with their job. If yes, why? Their answer might give you some inspiration.

Finally, closing out your answer with something unique about you. The reason for this is very simple and slightly superficial. And that’s to make you memorable in the mind of the interviewer. There are two ways to go about this. Number one, mention something truly unique or at least uncommon about you and how that relates to the role you’re applying for. Or number two, mention a common strength and give a memorable example. For me, I spent half my life in the US and half around Greater China. While this background doesn’t even make me close to being a unique special snowflake, I could and I did mention how my international upbringing would benefit a multinational company like Google, or I should mention how I’m proactive which is a common strength and give the memorable example that to better engage my clients, I went out of my way to create how to videos when I was still in the sales team. So to quickly recap. Your answer to the why are you good fit for this role question, should address all three points, the interviewer wants to uncover.

Number one, what can you bring to the role?

Number two, what do you want to get out of it?

And number three, what makes you unique?

Similar to the tell me about yourself question, limit your answer to two, to two and a half minutes while allocating 50% of your time to point one, 30 percent to point two, and the remaining 20% to point three,