There are certain questions that stump a candidate during a job interview. The responses in the parentheses below can be sure-fire deal breakers:
Tell me about yourself (“I was born is Ukraine during the Soviet….”)
Tell me about your greatest achievement (“Getting my son into Stanford”)
Tell me about your greatest failure (“I have not yet failed at anything I have pursued”)
Tell me why I should hire you (“This job will allow me to be at par with my friends, who are already at this level.”)
Of all these stumpers the last one is typically the most difficult, although the answers provided above can cause the interviewer to look for other candidates. So, let us look closer at this critical question and how to best answer it. At the end of this blog I also plan to provide a recent response that not only got my client the job HE wanted (not as it was initially posted), but also provided him a unique opportunity to do something interesting.
Let us first look at the interview process that takes you to the point where such a question is asked. If this question is asked early in the process the appropriate response can be: Based on the job description and my experience I see a good match, and from that perspective I’d like to explore further to see how I provide the best value in the proposed role. This polite and guarded answer should allow you to move forward in the interview process if you are able to otherwise qualify.
The best time for this question to be asked is when the hiring manager has already qualified you and they are ready to make you an offer, but they have not crossed the Rubicon yet. So, when such a question is asked at that time it gives you a chance to make your “closing argument” in response to that very question.
Based on how you navigated to this point in the process you have already talked to many members of the interview team. You have sniffed out the opportunities this company provides based on the research you have already done before the first interview. During the interview process you have probed insightfully into the areas that you find interesting and where you can create the greatest impact (hint: Don’t just answer questions, but ask great ones at each point. Develop a pattern from their responses to synthesize a compelling point of view for your candidacy during your “closing argument.”).
Now you have come to the terminal point in the process where the hiring manager asks you this make-or-break question: Why should I hire you?
This question asked at this point in the process should prompt you to deliver a persuadable, cogent answer to make you the candidate sine qua non among all those on the short list. In response, you summarize what you have learned throughout the interview process about the company’s needs. You fortify those needs with your professional and intuitive insights about where the company can derive the most value from your expertise.
To further intrigue the interviewer you project the direction in which the company is moving and the competitors are marching. Then deliver a short but compelling action plan to deal with what you see as the most important contribution you can make to take the company with your leadership for it to stand out in the market, as a result of your future role there. In the end you say, if any other candidate you are currently interviewing can do better than this then I suggest that you hire THAT candidate!
With this preface, let me now give an object lesson of how this was actually accomplished recently. My client had been an accomplished architect and designer (at a senior-manager level) of mobility products. He was now ready for a director-level job, but was limiting himself to mere design work. So, when an opportunity came for him to apply for a Senior Quality Manager role at a premier company in that space he applied and began interviewing.
During the interview process he uncovered that the company was viewing the quality role as a mere extension of its manufacturing operations rather looking at it holistically, starting with the design and market requirements—areas my client knew intimately. He also uncovered that there was no visible link between design quality, manufacturing yield and processes, and field and customer failures. He uncovered this by asking insightful questions to each interviewer he encountered.
The last stop was final interview, again with the hiring manager, who was the company’s COO. So, when he popped that, tell me why we should hire you, question my client was ready and here was his response:
“After completing all the interviews I discovered that your company would do much better if you reposition this job and empower it with having to manage quality, not merely to inspect the products coming out of the manufacturing line, but by looking at it from end-to-end, starting with how the design process is structured from a prevention perspective. I found that lack of agreed-to requirements often results in much rework and release delays, which exacerbate quality issues in most of your releases.”
“I also found that the field failure data is not incorporated into the ongoing design improvements and there is no visible effort to improve ongoing reliability of existing designs. Customer escalations are handled episodically and there is much room for improvement in your C-Sat scores stemming from that alone. What I’d like to propose is to take charge of quality, not just by inspection at the end of the manufacturing line, but by also creating a new regime that improves quality end-to-end. If that kind of leader appeals to you then I am the person you should hire. If not, I’m sure there are plenty of others who would want this job.”
When the COO heard this response he was awestruck! Soon this discussion resulted in re-scoping the opening from a Senior Quality Manager to Director of Quality, Reliability, and Customer Experience, with a much bigger team of 40 now reporting to this client, and, of course, a pay package to match.
So, next time someone asks you this pivotal question, be ready with a killer response and reframe your opportunity.
Good luck!
Photo: Compfight.com