> 1. Why do you want to take this role?
> 2. Why are you a good fit for this role?
These are the two most useless things to ask from yourself. You know almost nothing reliable about the role - except when have real insights from earlier, but that is the priority line, not in scope here with open competition of unknown persons - at the stage of interviewing apart from what is put into pompous public descriptions of the company and the role designed to amaze (basicly self praise, overstatements, no negatives, sometimes misdirections). Only broad scopes yet. Also you will only have chance knowing if you are fit after some discussion not before even the first contact! Come on! And that is only a chance knowing some, you will only know the culture, the procedures, the infrastructure, the mentality, the professionalism, basicly everything important about the organization affecting your fit after the first couple of months working there. Then you could determine if you are fit or not! Not at the submission, please! Be honest to yourself and to your future colleague!
Good employers know this, they experience it from the other side (testing an employee fit takes time in action, and several times they fail predicting it). Also people can and have to form themselves into the role, no one born fit. Pretending to know the answers already when there could be none yet either shows a will to bullshit or being clueless. None of which are desirable (in most cases, bullshiting is useful for some organizations, of course).
What are the honest and reliable answers here? (in generic case, not for those through backdoors)
1. I need to work for money pretty soon and you just have this open role which I think I could fulfill some way.
2. No chance knowing that at this stage however on the surface and based on both of our public history and things we project about orselves the chances are good.
No way standing out by pretending along such vague or obvious questions, that is basically the generic approach at this elimination stage what everyone is doing. I straight up refuse writing childish essays called cover letter too, ranting about how good fit I am and how thrilled I am applying to this specific role and specific organization happened to have open position when I happened to look for jobs, what a great coincidence and life purpose! I send either nothing, empty page (when the submission system tries to enforce it), or contextual facts about the application. Role relevant facts are already in the CV/Resume. We could talk about intentions and fit in person, not through robotic HR elimnators. If this is no good for the employer then we are definitely no fit.
Good employers know this, they experience it from the other side (testing an employee fit takes time in action, and several times they fail predicting it). Also people can and have to form themselves into the role, no one born fit. Pretending to know the answers already when there could be none yet either shows a will to bullshit or being clueless. None of which are desirable (in most cases, bullshiting is useful for some organizations, of course).
What are the honest and reliable answers here? (in generic case, not for those through backdoors)
1. I need to work for money pretty soon and you just have this open role which I think I could fulfill some way.
2. No chance knowing that at this stage however on the surface and based on both of our public history and things we project about orselves the chances are good.
No way standing out by pretending along such vague or obvious questions, that is basically the generic approach at this elimination stage what everyone is doing. I straight up refuse writing childish essays called cover letter too, ranting about how good fit I am and how thrilled I am applying to this specific role and specific organization happened to have open position when I happened to look for jobs, what a great coincidence and life purpose! I send either nothing, empty page (when the submission system tries to enforce it), or contextual facts about the application. Role relevant facts are already in the CV/Resume. We could talk about intentions and fit in person, not through robotic HR elimnators. If this is no good for the employer then we are definitely no fit.