3. Why do you want this role?

• Time to sell yourself by matching your strengths with their needs. E.g. 'Use my five years of J2EE dev experience to create industry-leading software solutions like your products.'
• It is important not to look 'needy' when your answer this question. Remember you are doing the company a favour if you join their team.

4. Why do you want to join this company?

• If it's permanent role, try to align what the company has to offer with your career aspirations.
• If you are a daily-rate contractor, just be honest and say 'the money' (with a smile).

5. Where do you see your career in 1/3/5 years?

• Make sure your one and three year plans fit into what the company can offer otherwise you may be considered a 'flight risk' and never offered a permanent job.
• Unless they tell you otherwise, most employees expect an employee to stay in the same permanent role for at least two years. Contractors always see out a contract.

6. Tell me what you know about this job and company

• Time to blow their trumpet(though don't bring the roof down). Demonstrate your knowledge of the company and why they are succesful(things that you know with at least 90% certainty).
• Make sure you interview the job description and any other information you have on the role carefully. Your recruiter can help answer this question. Most companies will not hire a candidate who has not gone to the trouble of understanding the role and company.
• This is a good time to ask your own question and learn about the role, company and industry from an employee's perspective. Thoughtful question can also demostrate your knowledge. E.g. 'How has your company responded to the recent changes in date retention legislation?'
• Make sure you ask 'who do you consider to be you main competitors'. You never know they might want to hire you too.

7. What are your main strengths?

• Don’t just list them! Quantify each strength with examples and facts. E.g. Instead of just saying ‘Cisco’, elaborate with ‘CCNA certified with 4 years of experience working with Cisco products’.
• If you are a techie, remember to talk about your technical strengths. For some strange reason, the more technical someone is, the less likely they are to describe technical skills when talking about their strengths.

8. What are your weaknesses?

• Why would you tell an employer what you are bad at? Re-think it as ‘What can you improve on?’ to make it easier to answer.
• A good way to answer is to refer to skills required for career progression, but not required in the current job opportunity (e.g. leadership skills).

9. What are you going to bring to the table? How will you be valuable?

• Time to deliver your Value Proposition. This is the primary reason an employer should hire you and is defined as ‘a promise of value to be delivered’.
• For example:
  

  ’Use my sixteen years in network engineering and support, including LAN & WAN design and network security, to be a valued member of your network engineering team.’

  ‘Deliver your projects on-time and budget following my ten successful years managing software development projects worth up to $6m with teams of 15 global resources.’