how to answer “why are you interested in this position?”

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Sit down for any job interview and one of the first questions you’re likely to be asked is, “Why are you interested in this position?”

For a lot of interviewers, this is a softball question: a way to ease into the interview without hitting you with high-pressure questions the minute you sit down. And to some extent, it is a softball question – but that doesn’t mean you should wing it. Sometimes candidates respond in a way that triggers concerns for their interviewer, like that you’re not actually that interested or that you’ve completely misunderstood what the job is. So while the question might sound straightforward, it has the potential to derail you if you don’t think through your answer ahead of time.

At New York Magazine today, I talked about how to answer it well. You can read it here.