Careers Advice Interview Preparation HelpHow do your skills/experience match the job description specification? Alternative and related questions: Do you feel your skills and experience match the job description/person specification? The meaning behind the question: Answering this question is going to be one of your interviewer’s primary goals. Many of the other questions will lead them towards an answer but sometimes the interviewer will just come out and ask you directly to tell them how you match the job description/person specification. As well as helping them to gauge how well your skills and experience match what they’re looking for, this question will normally also reveal a lot about how you perceive the job in question. Your answer: You’re not going to get away with answering, “Very well!” to this question. What the interviewer expects you to do – and what you very much need to do – is to explain precisely how your skills and experience match the job description/person specification. Job descriptions and person specifications are often very lengthy and comprehensive. You don’t want to go into too much detail when answering this question – not least because it could get rather boring! The best strategy to adopt is for you to select a handful of issues and briefly talk about each in turn – expressing each in terms of your prospective employer’s needs. Naturally, you will need to give this some thought and to have determined in advance what skills and experience the interviewer is going to be most interested in. Example: I believe my skills and experience are a very good match for the person specification. You’re looking for someone with a significant amount of high-level experience. You need someone with considerable skill in financial management, able to build turnover – and, most importantly, to build turnover profitably.