Ask HN: How to answer properly “Why we should hire you” question?
Assuming they ask this at the end of the interview after you&#x27;ve shown your skills and discussed your experience:<p>&quot;I believe I&#x27;ve demonstrated that I&#x27;ll deliver significantly more value with my work than I&#x27;ll cost you in salary and benefits.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s pretty much the reason anyone should hire you, for any role, in any industry.<p>Most interviews are really about demonstrating the value you&#x27;ll deliver. Keep that in mind with every question you answer. When talking about your skills and experience, describe how you&#x27;d use them to help the company your&#x27;re interviewing with.<p>If you&#x27;re being interviewed by the hiring manager, ask them questions to determine what <i>his or her specific problems are</i>, and talk about how you&#x27;ll help solve those problems. If you&#x27;ve done that, you should probably skip the equivocating and just say:<p>&quot;You&#x27;ll make more money from my work than I&#x27;ll cost in salary and benefits.&quot;<p>Because if you haven&#x27;t already convinced your interviewer of that by the time you&#x27;re asked the &quot;why should I hire you?&quot; question, you probably don&#x27;t have a chance regardless of your answer.<p>EDIT: I like the points some people have replied with! Answer #2 would probably work best if you&#x27;re a short term contractor who has to deliver cold, hard value quickly.<p>My initial responses were probably a bit of a grumpy off-the-cuff response to an interview question I think is a bit pointless. The general sentiment is true, but if the interview has been conducted with minimal competency by the interviewer, then you&#x27;ll have already spent the whole interview talking about why they should hire you and the value you deliver.<p>If instead they open with &quot;why should I hire you?&quot;, that&#x27;s probably not a sign that the interview is going to go well either.