These are the only two that matter. As a job candidate in the hot seat, you can expect to be asked dozens — sometimes hundreds — of questions about your strengths, weaknesses, values, and goals.
But according to attorney and LinkedIn user Arkady Itkin, there are only two that “really matter and that you should be ready to answer to ace your interview,” he writes in a recent LinkedIn post.
They are: “Why us?” and “Why you?”
Keeping these two questions in mind when preparing for a job interview in any field will “help you focus on what really matters to you and to that potential employer,” he explains. The “Why us?” question, he writes, “is about what makes the company so great and so desirable to you and not why you think they are good enough for you to work at.”
Itkin says in order to answer this question you’ll need to do your homework and figure out what makes this company different from others. “Do they have unique clients or work philosophy that’s different from their competitors? What is it about the history of the company or their management that’s appealing to you?”
If you’re impressed with the top leaders’ credentials and believe you could learn from how they work, “proudly say so,” he suggests. If you love their product, tell them why you’re so impressed with it. When it comes to answering, “Why you?” you’ll want to tell the prospective employer what makes you so great without actually saying it. (You never want to come off as entitled or arrogant.)
“Talk about your prior work experience and your interest in that field of work,” Itkin writes. “Talk about your ideas that you believe would be very useful to the team you want to work with.
Share other objective facts and quantifiable accomplishments … about why you are good at what you do, and why you would be a good fit for the company without using generic, self-serving cliché adjectives that should only be used as bullet points in a résumé, if at all, and sound like bragging.”
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