How to introduce yourself to a interviewer ?

by ram
(chennai)

I'm ram, basically from a agricultural family and now trying to adjust my self in corporate world. I'm a guy with strong desire of becoming big, to be very frank this big of course in the sense of money.

My strength is that I'm good at taking decisions, I do interact well with peoples as its a big requirement for being good business graduate, and weakness as such i don have, but when it comes to emotions , sometimes i found myself weak at this point.

Before i was student of Bioinformatics, but I never found my self so convenient with it, so I decided to start my carrier in business.

Reply by Peter Fisher

Your self introduction is important because you need to make a good first impression.

The way to create a favorable first impression is to be sure you appear confident and open. When you meet your interviewer for the first time, make eye-contact at the introduction and repeat the interviewer's name as you shake hands and thank them for inviting you to the interview. As you get seated, smile to indicate you are ready to get down to business.

What often follows is the invitation to 'tell them about yourself' which allows you to commence your self-introduction that is so important to your interview success. This is the phase where you develop the rapport that will carry you through to the positive outcome at the end of the interview.

Because self introduction is your key to interview success, you must have previously prepared exactly what you are going to say. This is not some lengthy story about your life, but a short focused statement that sounds interesting to the listener. You make it interesting by keeping it short (less than 3 minutes) and by showing that you are interested in both the job and the organization. This means you need to do some research about the business beforehand.

In your self introduction you will include some examples of your strengths and achievements which relate directly to the requirements of the new job. This must also demonstrate your personal qualities that you apply when you are doing the job because the type of person you are is often far more important then just having the ability to do a job.

The way you outline your self introduction, in particular the way you speak, tells the interviewer whether you are confident in your abilities so you must rehearse it well, but don't try to be what you are clearly not - you'll only be found out at a later date. Get a friend to listen to your self-introduction with a critical ear, because if it sounds false it will set the alarm bells ringing with the interviewer who will detect that it is not the real you and destroy the rapport you were building up.

Practice speaking faster or more slowly, louder or quietly and try to vary it throughout.

When you have prepared your self introduction, ask yourself this question: 'What does the interviewer need?'

Starting the interview well

Most interviewers like to have an informal chat about the weather and travel and so on, then they will start off the formal part of the interview with something like this:

"tell me about yourself"

The words may vary of course but "Tell me about yourself" is a request to start talking and get the interview under way. It is at this point that PANIC sets in. What do they want to hear? Where do I start? How long have you got?

Your answer to this really is quite simple when you think about it this way: The reason you are sitting in this room with this interviewer is to convince them that you are the person they need to hire. Therefore what they want to hear from you are reasons and facts to convince them that you ARE the right person to hire.

You need to give a positive and relevant response that will set the right tone for the interview that follows. The interviewer is forming their impression of you during this time so you need to understand what is required for the answer to this question, so that your interview stays on track.

Although you hope they have read your CV, you might wonder why they are asking this 'tell me about yourself' question in the interview. It is because they want to see how well you can present your thoughts confidently and structure your answer in a way that shows you understand their needs for the job.

There is a lot more on this page Interview Guide, so I suggest you should read that page for all the answers to your interview questions.