Tell Me About Yourself Is Your Most Important Interview Question

"Tell Me About Yourself" is the most popular way for hiring managers to start most one-on-one interviews; get this right and the rest of the interview will fall into place. Yet so many people just don't get it right and perhaps lose out because of that.

After the informal chat about the weather and travel and so on, most interviewers will start off the formal part of the interview with something like this:

The words may vary of course but the request is 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?

This is a job interview! They do NOT want to hear irrelevant stuff about where you go to watch football or your pets' names or how your grandchild just lost her first tooth. (I've heard all of these.)

What they DO want to hear is a brief introduction to show how your career brought you to THIS point of being here in THIS room with them. This means you need to show where and how you got started, the decisions and changes you made along the way and that the role you are about to be interviewed for is the right progression for your career. But not only is it right for you but with your interest, enthusiasm and skills it will be right for the prospective employer as well. And do all this in about 3 minutes!

You have three minutes to hold their attention and tell them how you took up your first job after college or university and gained specific skills as you progressed. Add to this your promotions or appointments to new job roles and how you sought out opportunities to develop in your chosen career. Spend most of your three minutes on your most recent job and how the expertise you have matches the underlying needs of the new job.

Then state most carefully that when you saw this new job being advertised, you became very excited as to the closeness of the match and the career development opportunity you envisioned. And that is why you are so pleased to be at this interview.

And that is how you construct your answer to the "tell me about yourself" command at job interviews.

Your Answer to "Tell Me about Yourself" at Job Interviews Part 2

You will already have researched the organization and know the function and responsibility of the job. You will already have prepared your career overview in a way that emphasises and matches your key strengths and job related skills to the key requirements of the job. Not only that but you have prepared yourself mentally for the interview and you are confident that you are the right person.

So you are ready; but what if your interviewer has failed to prepare as well as you have? If you detect any signs that he hasn't prepared, or starts talking too much or fails to ask you, then I suggest you find a way of interjecting "Could I tell you a little about myself?" which will probably be grasped with some relief.

This is how important the "Tell me about yourself" phrase is: it is your best opportunity to set the agenda for the whole interview and she who sets the agenda influences the outcome.

When the interviewer has not prepared fully, he will rely on the most recent information to hand from which to form the follow-on questions. The most recent information is what he has just heard and will therefore ask questions that derive from your answer to "Tell me about yourself".

You see how important it is now; don't just accept what some say is merely an interlude to allow you to settle in the interview room and hear your own voice before the real proceedings get under way. Your answer to what is probably the most common interview 'question' can be crucial to the outcome and determine whether you are successful at being offered the job.

So my plea to you is this: If you do nothing else to prepare for your interview, please be sure to prepare your answer to "Tell me about yourself". At job interviews it is possibly the most important answer to prepare.

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Tell Me About Yourself

Your Answer to 'Tell Me About Yourself' at Job Interviews

Your Answer to "Tell Me about Yourself" at Job Interviews Part 2