Why would you hire You?

"I've improved year-over-year revenues by 120%" or "the processes I put into place enabled the company to realize performance gains of...blah, blah, blah."

I don't want to sound critical or diminish the accomplishments you've had, but what if anything does this mean to me as your future employer?  While past successes can be deemed predictors of future performance, please make a point of demonstrating how these accomplishments will apply specifically to me. More simply, if you were interviewing You, would your answers compel you toward giving yourself a 'hire' vote or just leave you with additional questions?

I encourage my coaching clients to think in terms I call differentiators.  I'm not talking about buzz words that can be found on your resume but real-world examples describing how you've addressed similar situations and turned them into 'wins'.

I worked recently with a senior executive and in her words, not unlike your math teacher in school, "you need to show your work" for me to understand what it is you do and how that relates to what I need done.

Clearly, before you can do that you need to do your homework and understand what your prospective employer does, what the role they need filled does and then be able to succinctly explain why hiring you is the solution they're seeking to do it better. 

I touched on this briefly in an earlier post but to recap, mentally switch chairs with the interviewer and ask yourself, "if I were interviewing Me what answer(s) would I need to hear?"

Do be prepared for some text book questions depending on the discipline (Project Management, Computer Science, Accounting, etc...), but beyond that they're probably more interested in hearing why you believe yourself to be the best candidate.  Answers that illustrate your unique and individual offerings with respect to logic and problem-solving will give a future employer an idea of how you use the skill set you've acquired.

"interesting that you ask that Ms/Mr hiring authority. When I was with ABC company we were faced with a similar set of challenges and I was able to leverage the existing resources and knowledge base to create an effective solution..."

Use your own verbiage, plug in the relative data points to build your story and now you've given a prospective employer a short essay as opposed to a multiple-choice answer in defining you and what you do.

Respectfully, don't expect to be singled out in a good way if you show up to the party bringing the same chips and dip that everyone else does...vinny