SIZ Education | The Best Answer to "Tell me about yourself! or Tell me your Story!" ☺️
Let me do the honors to invite
Tell me about yourself, the most typical job interview question that everyone asks. Usually, the interviewers ask you first as an icebreaker when you first sit down at your job interview.
Now there are a million ways to answer this open-ended question. And there are also about a million YouTube videos out there giving you various ways to answer it. But today, I'm going to give you the quickest simplest, best way to answer this question.
From the Perspective of the Recruiter or Hiring Manager.
Let's look at this thing from the other side of the fence. But, first, let's look at it from the perspective of the recruiter or hiring manager. Usually, when you post the position, you get many responses, and you may well end up with, especially these days with over a hundred candidates applying for the position.
So for you, this is an elimination game. Your job is to go from a hundred applications down to one candidate that you select. From the job seeker's perspective, who is being interviewed, you don't know the criteria they use to eliminate people.
There are posted requirements for the position, but the problem is more than one person may meet all posts and requirements.
So there's often a hidden criterion that they don't tell you of "what will get you eliminated or hired."
For example, a hiring manager who's a fan of a particular sports team and if you happen to volunteer that you're a fan of the opposing sports team may be grounds to eliminate you because you might not be a good fit, and this does happen.
Now we're gonna make one assumption here, and that is that they've actually read your resume. So if you apply for a position and send in your resume, they later receive it and then call you in for an interview; usually, that means that they've read your resume.
Not always where that hasn't actually occurred but in the vast majority of cases. We can assume this to be true. So what does this mean? This means that the content on your resume is safe. Everything you've written on there did not result in you getting eliminated.
So it's safe content to use, and when you get asked ‘tell me about yourself in a job interview this is what you do start off by saying
“well as you can see from my resume that's the first thing you say”
Then go down your resume in chronological order starting with the oldest material and then getting closer to the present and finally talking about your most recent experience. This should take about 45 seconds no more than a minute then end with the phrase
“and that's what brings me here today and why I'm excited to learn more about this opportunity”
Communicate with the Interviewer
You see your purpose in a job interview is to communicate to the person interviewing you:
- How you're the person for the job?
- How do you meet all the qualifications?
That's your purpose in the interview. you don't want to waste your valuable time talking about something you did 15 years ago that has nothing to do with this position. and is just taking up time.
That's why you want to summarize your resume in 45 seconds to a minute, no more than that really see.
It's an obvious fact that people learn and retain only a small proportion of what they hear. it's like a very small percentage of what you hear that you actually understand and retain and can recall later.
So that's why you want to mention it more than once...
How do you meet all the qualifications? you want to make sure it registers😉
The Best Answer to "Tell me about yourself!"
So when you get the question ‘tell me about yourself, all you have to do is say,
“Well, as you can see from my resume,” and then you summarize your resume in about 45 seconds to a minute. Maybe start with your education, oldest experience, and then come up chronologically to the present, where you end with your most recent experience.
And then you end with the phrase and “that's what brings me here today and why I'm excited to learn more about this opportunity” see you want to spend as much time as possible talking about this opportunity, not stuff you've done in the past.
That's why it's very important to try and steer the conversation from something you did years ago to get them to talk about this position so you can explain how you meet the requirements.
Over to You!
So hopefully, that'll be useful for you; please take a moment now to upvote and also be sure to check out @technglee for some extra content, and of course, you're awesome
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