You can rattle off all your skills and boast your extensive experience, but sometimes you need to be more specific than that. For example, when you’re asked the interview question “why do you think you’re a good fit for this role?”
Don’t trip over yourself trying to come up with the perfect answer to this question, but don’t go too simple with it either. There are three specific factors you need to tie together to answer this question.
1. Highlight Your Successes
The hiring manager wants to know what you would bring to the table at their company. Your first priority should be to prove that your actions get results. Anyone can say they’ve managed social media accounts, but did your posts gain new followers, interactions, and customers?
Go into all of your interviews with relevant successes at the forefront of your mind—have metrics mentally prepared and everything. When asked why you’re good for this role, detail the ways in which you’ve thrived in similar roles before. Instead of saying that you have experience managing social media accounts, talk up the biggest campaign you ever did and be specific about all the ways your work benefited the company. Finish off your answer by letting the hiring manager know you’d love to do something similar for their company, and that you’re already brimming with ideas!
2. Emphasize Relevant Skills
Don’t try to highlight every skill you have. You may have some impressive ones in your repertoire, but if it’s not relevant to the role, then the hiring manager won’t care. Burying your most relevant skills in a list that includes irrelevant ones will only overshadow them.
So, review the job posting before you head into the interview and be aware of which of your skills are listed on it. Pulling skills directly from this list, with the aforementioned evidence to your successes, are the best way to impress a hiring manager. If you cut down all the fat and only discuss your most relevant skills, you’ll look like the perfect candidate.
3. Demonstrate Company Knowledge
Pepper knowledge about the company throughout your answer. This knowledge can be anything, as long as it relates to your successes and skills. Maybe you’ll speak to the fact that your values directly line with those of the company’s, or you’ll point to projects they’ve done in the past that you’d like to help with in the future. You can even simply state you’re a fan or consumer of the company and point to any evidence that you have. Other applicants may have the skills, but if only you know the company, you’ve got a leg up over them.
Asserting your knowledge about the company will also win you bonus points with the hiring manager. It shows that you have a genuine interest in the company and took the time to learn about it.
The best answer you can give will be a combination of all of the above. The quick formula is: list off your relevant skills with examples of how they can benefit the company and tie these things into your knowledge of the company. Like all your other answers, keep it succinct but make every word have meaning. Any hiring manager is sure to be impressed!
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Emily Morrison is a media professional with passions for writing, film and popular culture.
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