Hi
@MayaM0921 and thanks for the kind words
! To firstly deal with the structure of the 'Why you?' answer, I think what you want is something like this:
- Give a high level summary of what your answer will be, something like 'There are three reasons why you should offer me a place: my critical thinking skills, my organizational skills, and my teamwork abilities, all of which are essential for a trainee solicitor'.
- Take the first skill/ability/attribute that you mentioned, and explain to the firm how an experience or achievement of yours demonstrates it. Use the STAR structure when walking the interviewer through the experience.
- Explain how the skill/ability/attribute is relevant for the job of a trainee solicitor.
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the other skills/abilities/attributes.
- Conclude by once again giving a short summary of what your answer has been, something like 'So, to conclude, my experiences demonstrate I possess excellent critical thinking, organizational and teamwork skills, and this makes me an ideal fit for the job'.
As for the second part of your question (regarding what skills/examples to pick) I think you have to be strategic in balancing both trying to have the most convincing possible 'why me' answer and in not boxing yourself in a position where you will be forced to repeat yourself. My strategy was to first come up with the best possible answer I could for the 'Why the firm' question, then the best possible answer for the 'Why the firm' question, then the best possible answer to the 'Why commercial law', and only then draft my 'Why you?' answer. This was because I found that only a few of my experiences and achievements, could be connected to firm USPs, slightly more could be connected to my why commercial reasoning, but a lot of them could be used for showcasing a relevant skill or attribute.
Beyond that, in drafting my 'Why you' answer I would just use the most impressive leftover experiences, and maybe reference one or two of the experiences in the 'Why commercial law' or 'Why firm' answers if particularly impressive. While you could still be asked a competency question in the interview that forces you to be repetitive, there's no way to eliminate that risk, as there's no way of predicting what competency you will be asked about. However, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Firstly, the interviewers know candidates will not have an unlimited list of experiences to leverage, and will definitely not mind repeating one if you also consider it and discuss it from a different angle. Secondly, while this was something I worried about a lot before my interviews (as at least compared to some of my peers, my CV was not as full) in practice it was not a situation I often found myself in. If anything, the opposite happened more, in that I would not get to speak about more than 2-3 experiences and sometimes I would finish the interview without having mentioned some of my most impressive achievements.
