It's a question about: - investment: showing why/how you maximize their profits amongst other candidates - relief: proving you will make their lives/jobs easi

It's a question about: - investment: showing why/how you maximize their profits amongst other candidates - relief: proving you will make their lives/jobs easier - simplifying the selection process: providing a means by which the employer orders the candidates through their own descriptions of the job - sanity-checking: giving bad candidates the opportunity to self-disqualify, or alternatively indicating a signal for the company to "re-think"