Careers advice

Answering the ‘why are you the best person for the job? question

How to meet this question head on.

While all job interview questions are designed to put you on the spot, one of the most direct, and therefore, most feared is: “why are you the best person for the job?”.

At its heart, this question sums up the entire job application process – why should they hire you and not any of the other people who’ve thrown their hats into the ring? Answering it is tough as there’s a fine line between selling yourself and coming across as arrogant, so you need to think about your response with care.

To help you craft the perfect answer, check out our tips below.

Why are you the best person for the job?

1. Don’t talk in negatives

Given that this question is asking about what sets you apart from the rest of the field, it might be tempting to put them down to make yourself look better. For example, by saying things like: “I bet no one else has much experience as I do with X or Y”.

There are a couple of reasons why this is a bad idea. Firstly, unless you’re applying for a job within your company, you probably don’t know anyone else who’s going for it, so you don’t know what level of skills and experience they’re bringing to the table. By the way, if it is an internal role you’re going for, talking down other applicants is about the worst thing you can do – it shows a lack of respect for your colleagues, and more than a little bit of cockiness on your part.

The other reason why this is a poor tactic is because you want to be framing the conversation in terms of the positives that you provide, rather than the hypothetical negatives of other candidates. Leave everyone else out of it, and concentrate on yourself.

Talk about you, not the other candidates.

2. Know what they’re looking for

It’s important to understand that this question is not an invitation to ramble on about all the great things you’ve achieved over your career. The interviewers will have seen your CV, so they already have a lot of this information.

What they want to see is that you understand exactly what they’re looking for in a candidate – in other words, how do your skills and experience equip you perfectly for this role?

This means, to answer the question effectively, you’ll need to have read, and be able to recall, the most important competencies provided in the job interview. From there, it’s a question of being able to match up the elements of this wish-list with your professional background to demonstrate that you’re the missing piece of the puzzle.

While the vast majority of your answer should focus on the attributes listed in the job advert, if you do have some particularly unique (and relevant) skill or experience, it’s worth mentioning these as well. You never know, these wildcards could prove to be the difference between you and the person who finishes second.

3. Provide examples

This tip is relevant to nearly any question that asks about your skills, experience and aptitude for the job. Being able to provide facts and figures that demonstrate your past successes is a powerful way of getting this information across, and adds some weight to your claims.

For example, if you’re applying for a sales position, you might want to talk about the percentage increase in revenue earned that you achieved from the start to the end of your last position. Similarly, when applying for a marketing role, you could talk about how you increased the company’s social media presence in terms of views or click-through rates.

Facts andfigures are your friend in making a convincing case.

4. Show you have solutions to their problems

As well as ticking the boxes, you want to show how you can go above and beyond. If you’re being hired for a specific reason – for example, let’s say that the company wants to venture more into using content marketing to generate leads for its sales team – show you’ve thought about the specifics of how this would work. For example, what types of content could they leverage? How could they target specific audiences? What platforms should they prioritise?

By doing this, you’ll help the recruiting panel picture you in the role, and therefore demonstrate your suitability to take on these problems for real.

5. Think long term

As well as the here and now, interviewers want to know how you’ll be the best person for the role in a year, two years or even further into the future. Perhaps the most fundamental part of this is knowing that you’re invested in staying with the company for the long-term. To help put their minds at ease on this matter, you could talk about:

Your objectives for the role: interviewers like to see how you’ll make the role your own, so talk about how you’ll develop the position to achieve both your and the company’s goals.
Your career plan: you could mention how the role fits into your broader career plan, and how you’ll grow and develop with the company.
Culture: discussing how the company culture is suited to you always goes down well, and helps assuage any concerns that you haven’t thought about what it’ll be like once you’re actually working there.