Ask HN: What's your 'Why should i hire you?' response?
It's often asked during placement or job offering sessions at college.What are the responses that recruiter are looking for? ( For recruiters what's the best response you got? )
This specific question implies that there is a power imbalance between you and the recruiter. Implying such a thing is slightly rude (even if the power imbalance is there, the social convention is to ignore it). So, how do you want to handle someone being slightly rude?
You could play the game on their terms, and just list your skills/characteristics. Of course the recruiter already knows them, so the signal you're sending is obedience in the face of slight rudeness.
You could be a little more forceful and (politely) say something like this: "before we talk about that I'd like to better understand which problems you need me to see if there is a fit between my skills and the needs of your organization."
You could be even more forceful and respond to slight etiquette transgression with a follow up transgression. For example, "I don't quite think this is the right framing, I'd like to first understand why I should work for you."
It's just a game, a dance. Don't think about it literally and play with the steps.
Companies and recruiters should know the qualities and capabilities of the person on the other side of the table, gleaned from background material. If they don’t, everyone’s time is being wasted, and somewhere, a puppy gets a slap
Wat
Another option is "Because the rest of your candidate pool won't generate the value that I will and it's a business risk to allow a competitor to hire me."
I wouldn't use this answer fresh out of college though. Instead I might go with "Because I'm more capable than my graduating peers for X, Y & Z. I'll give you better bang-for-buck over time than other new grads and mid-level candidates in your pipeline and you don't have to pay anyone a recruiter fee."
Go for the throat. Also nobody gets this level of confidence/honesty/awareness in response to these questions, so at the very least you will stick out.
Make sure it's a check you can cash though.
If you can simply demonstrate that you understand how to provide the business with value then you're miles ahead of 99% of other candidates.
If anyone doubts this, go ask people who do sales how they answer this question. Great sales people in interviewes will already have a calculated dollar amount in new revenue that they're going to bring to the business.
My whole resume is presented as projects I've done that generated real value for the business. My interview and offer rate is above 50%. It's not rocket science.
Be careful when "going for the throat" as you could come across the wrong way. We almost turned down one engineer because he seemed insecure and hot tempered, but the reality was that he was just anxious about the interview and having his credentials questioned. He turned out to be a mature, nice guy.
Usually peoples negative qualities cost the business money.
That sort of adversarial bollocks is a bit shallow and something I would never bother with.
I have two employees that came back after leaving - you?
The original question is already a red flag. Now we're just taking jabs at each other. Especially if this is an interview after I've given you a technical test which probably represents the work better than any answer I could give to the question.
I would, however, try to obtain the same info using less jarring questions; possibly asking why the employee chose _us_ to decide to make their next career step, what inspires them to do this work, things like that.
If someone answered that to me it would tell me a lot of things. You don't want to deal with non-techies, you don't want to deal with business requirements or company objectives, you probably don't work well with others, especially if they aren't critical to achieving your tasks.
Ultimately, it is a small-minded approach. If you are working at a startup you probably need to have some business-sense to fill in all the gaps, and if you work at a mid-size to large corp. you are going to be stuck in the basement and someone will need to be the filter to keep you productive at all. Some people work like this and that's all they want to do, but it's self-limiting. Most companies will hire someone more aware of themselves and their role within the company.
But to answer the original question, a good answer would probably be an honest one that is clearly stated. Something like "I feel this is an ideal opportunity for me because the responsibilities of the role are challenging but not overwhelming. I am excited to work with [tech stack] and I'm impressed by [proprietary]. Your team seems knowledgeable and I look forward to learning from them just as much as I can contribute."
Your example of a good answer is great, and is delivered as if the original question was better worded.
I guess I’m rallying against lazy interviewers who ask “why should I hire you”.. :) it was a theoretical by the OP, and I need to relax.
Ultimately this is a "Rorschach test" question. Because it's completely and entirely open ended, it isn't measuring anything other than the interviewee's ability to say what the interviewer wants to hear. An interviewer that asks this question is probably not that good of an interviewer, because, with very few exceptions, being very good at fast talking isn't a skill needed to do the job.
If you're asked this and willing to forgive the company for giving you an interviewer that would ask this, the other answers have good suggestions.
But there's always more material that I can learn ahead of time about your company than you can learn about me as an individual. If the interviewer should know the answer already, then the interviewee should know an answer, too.
I will admit that it's probably not a good question for medium/large companies, where there's a specific role to fill, but for small companies I kind of like it. There's 10 different things we need to hire for, and you've got 100 different skills, so which ones do you have that align with our needs, and which ones do you want to apply here? You can't fit everything on a resume.
I confess I've asked this once myself, at the very start of an interview. I was exhausted from interviewing 10 other candidates, and this guy's resume wasn't very impressive, and I just wanted the guy to say something that would make me feel it wasn't going to be a waste of time. (Unfortunately, he was very junior, like "just learned to code last month", and his answer only reinforced that. I'd have loved to have hired him, but we really weren't in a position to hire junior developers yet.) It wasn't my best interview question, but it definitely wasn't my worst, either.
The trouble with simply shooting this down as a bad interview question is that nobody has ever been able to tell me what a universally good interview question is. This one is open-ended and gets them talking, at least.
So I've never cared about how one candidate compares to another. It's not a zero-sum game. If you're going to have a positive impact on the company (and its bottom line), then I want 3 of you. If you're going to have a negative impact, then I want 0 of you.
Obviously, there are also many situation where the opposite is true, e.g., if you're building a baseball team you want the best roster even if some of the positions aren't ideal.
It's also something that they'll end up using if they have to justify your hiring to other people, so there's value in making it good.
A) A recruiter is not going to be hiring you (but tread carefully because they're a foot that can be used in many doors)
B) You primary object is to formulate the answer to that question from what you can harvest throughout the interview
C) A positive, direct and clear answer should do nicely, almost always.
D) No puppies will be harmed unless you swing and miss and end up kicking your own puppy when you go home because you blew the question.
So, B. I can do many things in many ways. You should end up knowing exactly why they should hire you before they even ask.
Oh, and
E) Learn to recognize the ones you don't want to be hired for and quickly. Interviews can be stressful. You don't want to waste good energy on something you want to get away from as far and as quickly as possible. I've had exactly two of these.
In that context, even if they know everything about you - that you've made public to them - there still might be some unique unknown standout reason why they should choose you over the other person.
Having an attitude about that would be an immediate disqualifier.
Then wait for their offer and use it to get hired by another company.
edit for clarification: This works by keeping all interested companies/firms/hospitals in the loop on where you are in the interview process with the other prospective employers. If they don't ask, you, the prospective employee, volunteer this information. Prospective employers adjust their interview schedules accordingly. Sometimes, volunteering information that you're in demand and about to leave the job market because you have an offer in hand is enough information to get an offer when another prospective employer would otherwise would just keep looking, hoping somebody better might become available in the next couple weeks.
You should know something about the company. Tell them how you can help solve their problems.
If the question comes at the start of the interview, and you don't yet know enough about what the specific department is facing, respond, 'Why don't we discuss some of the problems you're facing, and I'll tell you how I can help with them.'
History's fine for backing up your claims. But people usually want to know what you can do for them.
P.S. Don't just paint yourself as a patsy problem mule (i.e. no boundaries and self-respect). Indicate also what you expect to get out of the deal and how you anticipate growing in the role).
Also, I guess job fairs are probably more of a "meat market". Nonetheless, if the person's really interested in recruiting, they should be interested in describing what they are trying to accomplish.
My answer is that the value I provide is far more strategic and macro level than just systems implementation.
I don't implement systems, I design processes, procedures and work instructions and map the entire org - Creating a living, breathing business manual. I automate and streamline the processes, provide reporting for transparency, continuous improvement and risk mitigation. I provide 'train the trainer' knowledge transfer (integrated with the system itself).
You purchase extensive strategic knowledge regarding the industry and company, which manifests as a future-proofed system that encourages as well as facilitates growth.
For every 10k you spend on my services, ROI will be > an order of magnitude.
My work brings firms up to ISO9001 standards, provides a quality management system, and implements as, customer satisfaction, team engagement, client retention and a host of procedures that SMEs haven't been able to think about or implement effectively.
Point being that (unlike many in this thread) I want to be asked this question from a prospective client, to show exactly what I can bring to the table. It allows me to show the true opportunity cost of not hiring me (I.e., stagnation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in following years).
Being serious, anyone asking something like this is probably just expecting you to kiss ass without being too obvious about it. If you really could make an exceptional contribution, perhaps because it's a field you genuinely want to work in after doing some related research or project during your course, by all means mention that. Otherwise the best thing you can do with a question like this is be polite and constructive. It might help to pick up on specific things you could offer that have been touched on earlier in the interview or at least mentioned in the job spec. If it's still early in the interview and you haven't got to that sort of discussion yet, try to turn the conversation around and discuss what they're looking for and then how you could help.
Usually A and B are opposing skills, like "I can code" and "I enjoy talking to people" or "I know backend programming" and "I have experience doing HTML design work"
Then again I'm not fresh out of college.
Didn't get a reply.
The abusiveness in the question lies in it's asymmetry. It's like playing a catch/throw ball game with somebody and they intentionally throw the ball far enough to the side to where they know you can't catch it, but they want to see you try. The best move, of course, is to not subject yourself to the indignity, not to try, and to make them go pick up the ball. You should probably also stop playing ball with that morally deranged person.
The only reason, short of ignorance, I can imagine a hiring manager being motivated to ask a question like this is to find out if they can abuse you and get away with it. The willingness to be subjected to abuse is sometimes something that managers want in their employees.
That said I'm not sure what I'd recommend. Tempted to say I'd terminate the interview but that also feels weird and creepy. Perhaps just chuckle playfully and hope they don't press for an answer?
That said, being able to consider a question that is irrelevant or poorly specified can demonstrate a certain amount of 'quickness' or ability to think on your feet.
However, you next are going to have to be able to supply some detail on how you can help them make money...
"By doing X, Y and Z you'll make more money", with evidence and a reasonable plan, is a decent argument. I've made these pitches as a leaf node in large companies and it's generally gone over well.
It's the answers like "I will empower your organization to..." or "We'll leverage synergy and..." that you should avoid.
I imagine the "make money" pitch will sound bad to a research group, or a governmental or quasi-governmental organization. But for many other places, assuming you're not blowing smoke, it seems pretty reasonable.
I might have been asked this other times but that's the one I remember.