Ask HN: How to answer properly “Why we should hire you” question?

It may be easier to answer if you tell us how you have been answering the question. For example, what did you say to the antivirus company person that made you fail the interview?

Assuming they ask this at the end of the interview after you've shown your skills and discussed your experience:

"I believe I've demonstrated that I'll deliver significantly more value with my work than I'll cost you in salary and benefits."

That's pretty much the reason anyone should hire you, for any role, in any industry.

Most interviews are really about demonstrating the value you'll deliver. Keep that in mind with every question you answer. When talking about your skills and experience, describe how you'd use them to help the company your're interviewing with.

If you're being interviewed by the hiring manager, ask them questions to determine what his or her specific problems are, and talk about how you'll help solve those problems. If you've done that, you should probably skip the equivocating and just say:

"You'll make more money from my work than I'll cost in salary and benefits."

Because if you haven't already convinced your interviewer of that by the time you're asked the "why should I hire you?" question, you probably don't have a chance regardless of your answer.

EDIT: I like the points some people have replied with! Answer #2 would probably work best if you're a short term contractor who has to deliver cold, hard value quickly.

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'll have already spent the whole interview talking about why they should hire you and the value you deliver.

If instead they open with "why should I hire you?", that's probably not a sign that the interview is going to go well either.

The first result on Google has pretty much all the advice you should need:

https://biginterview.com/blog/2013/04/why-should-we-hire-you...

I hope I'm not alone in thinking "why should we hire you" is a bit of a dumb question and a bit insulting. If I was asked that, I'd be thinking something like: We're all adults here. We know why you're trying to hire someone approximately like me, and why I'm trying to get the job. Let's be friends instead of you trying to get me to trot like a show pony. This isn't a game show. Or if you think it is, maybe I don't want the job after all, because I value my dignity.