4 Ways to Address “Tell Me About Yourself: Make a winning first impression!

A question you will hear at the start of nearly every job interview is “tell me about yourself?“ It is natural to assume that the interviewers want to know about you, your life, your family, what you do for fun, and anything else you think would interest them.

This is not what your prospective employer needs to know. A chronological life history is too long and may hurt, rather than  advance your candidacy for the job.

 Instead, interviewers want you to show them how your background relates to the role.

Your response should grab the interviewers’ attention and then deliver a message that will help your candidacy for the job. While your message should not include your whole life story, you can discuss your relevant past, present, and future career as it relates to the job.

As you prepare for the next interview, remember that you are building a message not a script. Be authentic rather than an actor reciting prepared lines.

Try the following to improve your interview results:

1. Start with a marketing hook,
2. Talk only about relevant jobs, schooling, and training,
3. Add brief success stories, and
4. Conclude without rambling.
   
   

The first 300 seconds of a job interview are crucial to your success. This period solidifies your interviewers’ first impressions. As we know from daily social interaction the rest of your time in this meeting is subject to confirmation bias. Your interview team will be trying, perhaps subconsciously, to support their first impressions.

Begin with a marketing hook.

Great opening lines work to grab attention. For example, a client in the fashion industry talked about how, as a child, she started helping out at her parents’ boutique. Then, she did trunk shows at her college. Her competition probably did not get the “fashion bug” until they were in college.

An engineer I worked with built a computer from parts in his bedroom during high school in the mid-1970s. (I believe the only other two people who built that computer design founded Microsoft!) Later, “just for fun” the same engineer built an esoteric digital modem that flew many Space Shuttle missions.

It’s difficult to imagine more fascinating “hooks. Certainly, an approach like this is better than starting out with your current job title or college degree.

My own hook would be that I was always fascinated by peoples” careers, what they did to be successful, or why they were less successful.

Keep your response relevant.

It is tempting to continue with a long-winded speech after your “hook.” But a “tell me about yourself“ response, like a résumé, is not a biography. You do not need to start with your first internship or first job unless you are a recent grad, or the jobs are relevant to your current goal. Instead, after your hook, talk about your current role, and any previous experience leading to that role. Discuss accomplishments in these roles that are related to the experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes you need for the job you are interviewing for.

Add success stories.

Your message at this stage of the interview should be about the successes you had in prior jobs that will lead to success in the new role. This is where you can briefly relate problems, action, result (PAR), situation, task, action, result (STAR), or condition, action, result (CAR) stories you are prepared to discuss in more detail later.

Be conversational. Don’t recite your résumé. The hiring team has read it already.

Ideally, your hook along with introducing your accomplishments will give the employer an opportunity to ask for more details. For example, you might want to say that you have met KPI goals, or exceeded them, at every job. Later, you can elaborate specifically on how much you exceeded goals at each job, and how you accomplished this.

Pick relevant accomplishments that you feel excited about. You will convey more interest and engage your audience more effectively.

Don’t ramble.

The “tell me about yourself” question is commonly the first question so a weak response will create a poor first impression. As a result, it is especially important to avoid a long, rambling answer.

A good way to avoid rambling is to conclude a short statement about the future. It is a logical ending since you have already spoken about your relevant experience and present or most recent job.

A conclusion might simply be to say that your experience means that you will meet or exceed performance goals set forth in the job description. Offer to elaborate later.

As you prepare for your interview, then, remember that your goal is not to deliver a script describing your life story at the start of your interview. Your goal, instead, is to demonstrate that your experience prior to this interview makes you the candidate of choice for this job!