The “Why you?” interview question most people fail
Mary Strange
UKey Newsletter is your insider guide to navigating the UK job market. Each edition is packed with practical tips on applications, CVs, and interviews, plus sector insights on who’s hiring and which industries are most visa-friendly.
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Happy Friday!
For the past week I have been mesmerised by Claude Cowork and what it can do.. I'll share some examples with you in today's edition!
Need some advice or have some questions? You can reply to this email and I'll respond to you directly.
In this issue:
How Claude Cowork will save you hours of time
The answer to "Why should we hire you?" that actually gets you hired
Freebies of the week
Stop using LinkedIn Easy Apply! UK job search websites to know
What I learned from Claude Cowork
At this point it's clear: AI literacy is no longer optional.
Employers will expect you to adapt. It's easier to start now, while this whole AI revolution is still in its infancy stage.
So, Claude Cowork is like an AI assistant that can automate everyday tasks on your computer.
You can also connect it to your other tools: Gmail, Canva, Calendar, Excel.
I decided to test it on something I’d been avoiding for ages.
My Downloads folder.
It had over 1,000 files from the last five years: random PDFs, screenshots, documents, images… the usual chaos.
Normally that would take hours to clean up.
Instead, I asked the AI to organise it. Within minutes everything was categorised into folders.
It took no coding knowledge (because mine stops at html lol). No complicated setup. Just instructions.
I didn't even tell it what categories to use - Claude Cowork suggested them and I gave feedback.
I then tried it on something else: sorting years of emails on my main Gmail account.
Again, it handled it quickly - I wanted to categorise everything in my "Reference" and "UKey" folders into sub-sections for easy use:
Claude Cowork output for Gmail sorting
I can now easily refer to things like my cats' insurance details just by asking Claude.
I can automate my morning routine of checking YouTube stats, newsletter stats, emails and upcoming meetings - by just typing 1 word into Claude and getting a report within 1 minute while I make my coffee.
Tools like this are a glimpse of how work is changing very fast. If you’re not already experimenting with AI tools that automate repetitive tasks, it’s worth starting.
Just search Claude Cowork on Youtube to see what it can do! It's genuinely crazy
Why should we hire you?
A quick observation from this week.
I was doing interview prep with a student recently and asked them a simple question:
“Why should this company hire you?”
They paused for a moment and said something along the lines of:
“Because I’m hardworking, motivated, and really want this opportunity.”
A completely reasonable answer.
But also the exact answer recruiters hear dozens of times a week.
And that’s the problem.
Most candidates answer this question by talking about what they want.
The strongest candidates answer it by explaining the problem they can solve for the company.
That’s exactly what I break down in my latest video:
Click the picture to watch :)
I cover:
Why the “Why you?” question matters so much
How to prepare for it - and how to stand out with your answer
A simple framework you can use to structure your response
If interviews make you nervous, this is one of the most useful answers to get right.
One of the biggest job search mistakes I see is over-reliance on LinkedIn Easy Apply.
It feels convenient.
But in reality, it’s often one of the weakest ways to apply for a job.
Easy Apply simply collects applications inside LinkedIn and then ranks them using LinkedIn’s internal filtering for recruiters to see.
The problem is those filters are far from perfect.
Great candidates regularly get buried in the system.
A much better strategy is:
Use LinkedIn to find the job, then apply directly on the company website.
And remember:
The “number of applicants” you see on LinkedIn is not the number of real applications. Often it’s just the number of people who clicked the apply link.
So LinkedIn is still extremely useful for job search, just not always as the final application step.
If you’re actively searching for jobs, these platforms are also worth checking regularly:
UKey Newsletter is your insider guide to navigating the UK job market. Each edition is packed with practical tips on applications, CVs, and interviews, plus sector insights on who’s hiring and which industries are most visa-friendly.
