How to Answer 'What Can You Bring to the Company?' in Job Interviews
‘What can you bring to the company?’ is a common but tricky interview question. The key to answering it well is demonstrating your unique value and potential contributions, even if you lack direct experience. Highlight your transferable skills, innovative thinking, teamwork abilities, and positive attitude. Research the company to tailor your answer. Provide concrete examples as evidence. Radiate confidence and enthusiasm.
One of the most common yet challenging questions you may face in a job interview is: “What can you bring to the company?” Especially for recent graduates or career changers, this question can feel difficult to answer given limited directly relevant experience. However, this is actually a great opportunity to stand out by highlighting your unique value proposition.
The interviewer is looking to understand several key things:
- Are you a good fit for the role and company culture?
- Do you have the potential to make meaningful contributions and add value?
- Are you self-aware of your strengths and motivated to apply them?
Here are some strategies to craft a compelling response:
Highlight transferable skills: Even if you haven’t held the exact same job title before, you likely have valuable transferable skills. For example, leadership experience from extracurricular activities, research skills from academic projects, or communication abilities from volunteer work. Explain how these skills will enable you to hit the ground running.
Underscore your potential: Emphasize your ability and eagerness to learn quickly on the job. Talk about times you rapidly mastered new concepts or stepped outside your comfort zone. Employers value adaptability and trainability.
Demonstrate innovative thinking: Companies want to hire problem-solvers who can bring creative solutions. Share examples of times you came up with innovative ideas or took an unconventional approach. Explain your thought process.
Emphasize teamwork: Rarely does a job exist in a vacuum. Showcase your ability to collaborate cross-functionally to achieve results. Provide instances of how you contributed positively to team dynamics and helped a group succeed.
Radiate enthusiasm: Skills can be taught, but not attitude. Convey your energy, passion, and proactive nature. Employers are drawn to candidates who are enthusiastic about the opportunity and motivated to drive impact.
Do your homework: Research the company ahead of time to understand their mission, values, and goals. Tailor your response to align your unique attributes to their needs. Explain why you will thrive in their environment.
Be specific: It’s not enough to just claim you have certain abilities. Back up your assertions with concrete examples of how you leveraged the skill to achieve results. Prepare short but impactful stories.
Don’t forget the intangibles: In addition to role-specific capabilities, companies value general competencies like leadership, communication, analytical thinking, and strong work ethic. Weave in mentions of these key strengths.
Project confidence: Imposter syndrome can creep in, but this is the time to convey confidence in your abilities. You don’t need to be arrogant, but do communicate your value with self-assuredness. Practice your response to build comfort on an upbeat, forward-looking note: Wrap up your answer by reiterating your excitement for the role and company. Express confidence in your ability to leverage your unique strengths to deliver strong results in the position.
Remember, the interviewer knows you likely don’t have years of experience in the role. What they really want to see is self-awareness of your relevant strengths, transferable skills, general potential, and motivation to contribute. By crafting an authentic, specific, confident response using the above strategies, you will set yourself apart from other candidates. Be yourself, prepare examples, and let your unique value shine through.