this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
123 points (99.2% liked)
Asklemmy
48748 readers
603 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They're not asking "why do you want a job" they're asking "why do you want this job".
As in, out of all the jobs that will pay you money, why do you want this one in particular?
There are other points during an interview process to lay out your pay expectations.
"Well I want this particular job because you called me back for an interview and the others didn't"
I mean, sure, if you don't want to try any other answer to help convince them to hire you out of all the other applicants.
"I can eat a standard pack of instant noodles in less than 30 seconds"
Hired!
Cooked or uncooked? Either way, you seem like a good fit for the team.
Baked dry and then snorted through my tear ducts.
Thanks boss, I look forward to designing 2 stage rockets with the rest of my equally qualified coworkers!
I've been very pleased with your performance since joining the family 30 seconds ago. How would you feel about joining our management training program? Double the work for 10% more pay. I'm so proud. Can I call you son?
I failed out of school in kindergarten but I know double and 10% mean numbers going up so I'll say yes. And since you're so nice about it I'll even do half the work for 10% more because I've seen those numbers on cartons of cream and I know the cream rises to the crop or something, which is good.
"I want this job because employmesayswhat"
"Why did you apply here and not every other company in the world?"
"Sorry, you must not have heard me; you called me back for an interview and the others didn't."
"Because I am capable of doing the work and can commute to the work location in a manageable amount of time."
It's about how you say it though.
If you can manage to not be weird about it, you can turn the concept into corpospeak ans do just fine.
Paraphrasing, because it's partially going to depend on the interviewer. "Your company has the market position to offer a pay scale that matches my quality as an employee" can end up nailing an interview.
Saying "I don't care where I work as long as I get paid", less so.
I would never want to work at a place where I have to talk like this unironically. It's ridiculous.
If you are competent, you show it directly. No need to hide behind bullshit buzzwords.
Well, at least that's my reverse filter for companies.
My current team leader interviewed me in a band shirt and we deep dived into realistic brainstorming for how I would approach real problems and we instantly vibed.
I immediately knew that's a good place.
"Because you're the only company out of 300 that emailed me back"
"I'm looking for a role where I can make good use of the skills I bring to the table" (because implicitly, the 299 places that didn't email back don't have a role where you can fit in and be useful (even if that's only true in the sense that they didn't hire you so therefore you can't contribute there))
Yeah. I ask them to justify the planning for this position and confirm the budget. They will have a budget.