How to answer why should we hire you in an interview

What the interviewer is listening for

This question often comes late in the interview, when the interviewer has your resume and several of your answers. They're asking you to connect those pieces: which parts of your experience match what they need, and whether you understand the job well enough to know what that is.

Most selection processes compare applicants against the requirements of the role and against each other. The Australian Public Service Commission's guide to interviews and assessment describes a panel rating each person's suitability and offering the job to the most suitable on merit, and private employers tend to work in a similar way, if less formally. The same guide suggests thinking in advance about your top three skills or qualities and why you applied, using examples tied to the duties of the job, and being honest. In public sector recruitment, that comparison is often formalised earlier in the process as addressing key selection criteria, and this question asks you to make much the same case out loud.

You don't know who the other candidates are, so there's no need to claim you're better than them. An answer that shows a close match between the job and your experience does that work for you, and it's far easier to say with conviction.

Build the answer from the job ad

Start with the job ad or position description and decide which requirements carry the most weight. Clues include the duties listed first, anything mentioned more than once, and anything the interviewer has asked about in detail. If you've already worked through the ad line by line, as how to prepare for a job interview suggests, this is a matter of choosing the strongest two or three pairings from that list.

For each one, put a specific piece of evidence next to the claim. A general quality sounds much the same from every candidate, whereas a short example of when you used it belongs only to you. Here's how the difference looks for a few common requirements:

• Attention to detail. "I'm very detail-oriented" could come from anyone. "I reconcile the supplier invoices each month and I've found several duplicate charges the system didn't flag" tells the interviewer what that detail looks like in practice.
• Working with a range of people. "I'm a real people person" is hard to test. "I'm the contact between our warehouse and the sales team, so I spend a lot of my week sorting out what each side needs from the other" gives them something to picture.
• Learning quickly. "I pick things up fast" is a claim. "We changed booking systems halfway through my first year and I ended up writing the quick guide the rest of the team used" is evidence.

Then add a sentence about why you want this job. Your motivation belongs in the answer because an interviewer is weighing whether you'll settle into the role, as well as whether you can do it. A reason tied to the work, the team or something the organisation does is more convincing than a general wish for a new challenge.

If you have less experience than the ad asks for

A first job, or a role where you meet most but not all of the requirements, can make this question feel harder than it is. The approach is the same. You draw your evidence from casual work, study, volunteering or responsibilities outside paid work, and you pick the requirements where that evidence is strongest.

It usually helps to lean on reliability, willingness to learn and the parts of the job you can already do, because those are what an employer is relying on when they take on someone less experienced. If there's an obvious gap, such as a system you haven't used, acknowledge it briefly and say how you'd close it.

This fictional example is for someone finishing Year 12 who is applying to be a pharmacy assistant, with two years of weekend work in a bakery behind them.

If you're changing careers or returning to work

When your recent experience comes from another field, the interviewer won't necessarily see how it applies, so the answer needs to make that connection for them. Name the two or three transferable skills that match the new role most closely and describe how you used them, in terms someone from the new field would understand. Industry shorthand from your old job can hide exactly the experience you want them to notice.

The same applies if you've been out of paid work for a while, for example after caring for family. Evidence from before the break still counts, and recent study, volunteering or organising done during it can show your skills are current. You don't need to explain the break in detail here unless the interviewer asks.

This fictional example is for a hospitality venue manager applying for a rostering coordinator role at a health service.

If you're one of several experienced candidates

When a role attracts people who could all do the job, a list of your core skills won't separate you from them. The more useful question to ask yourself is what you'd bring that goes slightly beyond the basic requirements, and how it links to something this employer is dealing with.

That link usually comes from research or from the interview itself. If the interviewer has mentioned a new project, a change in the team or a recurring problem, you can connect your experience directly to it. Recent, specific work tends to carry more weight here than a long career summary, because the interviewer already has the summary on your resume.

This fictional example is for an experienced site supervisor applying to a builder that specialises in school projects.

When they also ask why you want to work here

"Why do you want to work here?" often comes up in the same interview, sometimes alongside this question. It asks more about your motivation and what you know about the organisation, while "Why should we hire you?" asks mainly about fit. If you're asked both, give each answer a different emphasis so you don't repeat yourself: evidence and fit for one, reasons and research for the other.

A good answer draws on something specific, such as the clients they work with, a service they run or the way the role is set up. The organisation's website and, for public sector roles, its annual report or corporate plan are useful places to look. Pay, location and flexibility are legitimate reasons to want a job, but they aren't usually the strongest ones to put first, because they say little about how you'd approach the work.

What tends to weaken the answer

Most unconvincing answers to this question fall into a few recognisable patterns:

• A list of qualities with no evidence, such as hard-working, passionate and a team player
• Retelling your resume in order, which covers the same ground as your opening answer and leaves the interviewer to find the relevant parts
• Claims about other candidates, such as saying you're the best person for the job
• Overstating experience to cover a requirement you don't quite meet, which a referee may later contradict
• Running long, usually because the answer tries to cover every requirement in the ad

Your answer to tell me about yourself explains how you got here, so this one can be shorter and focused on the match. Practise it out loud, but keep it to the main points. The interview may have raised a priority you didn't expect by the time the question is asked, and a little room lets you swap in the evidence that fits it.