The Perfect “Tell Me About Yourself” Answer for Any Job Interview

Tell me about yourself is one of the most common interview questions that you're going to get throughout your entire career. Ironically, though, it's one of the most misunderstood interview questions. You know the question is coming, and it sounds easy on paper, but then you find yourself in the interview in the moment, and you start saying to yourself, what do I actually say here? Where should I start? And when do I stop? As a recruiter, I have interviewed thousands of people, from account executives all the way up to CEOs, and so many people fail this question, which can have a huge negative impact on the interview and is very hard to overcome. In this video, I'm going to give you an incredibly simple framework that I developed that will ensure that you always give a really confident and succinct answer to this question. And I know this framework works because I've given it to thousands of people. The people that answer this question correctly get hired. The people that struggle with it often don't make it past the first round. So why does this happen to so many people? Some people ramble. They start with where they were born, what their childhood hobbies were, and five minutes later they're still going but haven't mentioned a single thing about their experience. Others just start reciting their resume with job titles and dates of employment, but there's no real storytelling or engagement to hook the interviewer in. And the worst mistake of all of them is any answer that doesn't actually connect your experience back to the role, which is going to leave the interviewer just sitting there wondering, why is this relevant? But really, why most people fail this interview question is because they're answering the wrong question. When an interviewer says, tell me about yourself, what they're really saying is, why is it beneficial for us to be talking today? Even more specifically, why is it beneficial for us to be talking today about this role and your experience? Now you might be saying, if that's the question they want to ask, then why don't they ask it? To be honest with you, it's not designed to be a trick question. I just think that interviewers have become over-reliant on this generic interview question to start an interview. So from here on out, when you hear, tell me about yourself, what you're really going to answer is, why is it beneficial for us to be talking today? Here's the truth behind this. When hiring managers ask for this, they're actually looking for three things. The first one is, can you communicate clearly and concisely? This one's incredibly important if you're a recent graduate and early stage professional because you're not going to have a lot of hard skills and professional experience to bring to the table. So they're going to over-index on your ability to effectively and clearly communicate. The second thing they're looking for is, do you have a baseline understanding of what the role is and how your experience aligns to it? Now this doesn't mean you have to memorize the job description and all of the bullet points, but it does require you to do some skimming and reading and have a baseline understanding of what the role is. And lastly, can you speak with confidence on the value that you can bring to the role based off of your experience? So I developed this incredibly simple framework on how to answer this interview question that anybody can use in any job interview. The framework is called Past, Present, and Future. This framework is going to make your interview answers clear, compelling, and impactful. It's designed to do one thing, to make it incredibly clear that you have the potential to be the right fit for the role. I'm going to break down the three phases of the framework and afterwards I'll give you real world examples of how to utilize it. Let's start with past. You're going to give two to four sentences that summarize your past experience. Now this is not the time to start going into individual roles or experiences. If you think about your career as a movie, the past is going to be your trailer. Next we're going to talk about present, which is where you are now or where you've been recently. This is going to give you the opportunity to give a little bit of a summary to explain your existing role or your last two roles, and most importantly, where they're going to add value. And lastly, you're going to talk about the future, why you're talking about this role and why now. Highlight why you think the job that you're talking about today is the perfect next step in your career. This is an opportunity to show that you've done a little bit of research, that you've reviewed the job description and you understand where you can add value for the role. Now let's put it all into action. For this first example, let's assume that you're a recent graduate and you're applying for a social media role. I recently completed my degree in digital marketing from Syracuse University. I chose that program because they had a really innovative program around social media under the broader digital marketing degree, which is an area that I really want to focus on in my career. I even got to take some really cool classes around AI and social media in my senior year. Most recently, I just completed an internship with the Chicago Bulls, which is kind of known as a best in class across the NBA when it comes to social engagement. I got to work on an incredible team and got some really hands-on experience on how to build like an organic video strategy, not only for social media engagement and growing your social media channels, but really to drive ticket sales. As I think about this role and why I'm excited that we're talking, I did a little research. Not only does it outline the job description that you're starting to build your organic video strategy, but I poked around in your social media channels and I see that video is starting to peek through in your strategy. I'm really excited because this is an area where I can take the learnings from Syracuse as well as my internship, and I feel like I can accelerate the impact that I can provide really quickly. Here's why this interview answer works. It's structured into the point. If you notice, it took me less than a minute to answer this interview question. I connected my past and present experience and how it's going to add value for the role. I also articulated that I've done a little bit of research and I understand the team and the company goals around the role. In the second example, you're a mid-career candidate and you're going to be applying for a social media role. After graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in digital marketing and completing a few internships on social media teams, I joined the social media team at the Chicago Bulls. For the past three years, I've been really focused on two core things, increasing social media engagement and fan engagement, as well as increasing ticket sales. We've had great success in both of those categories. As an example, we've increased our Instagram followers by 200% as well as our ticket sales by 17%. I saw in the job description that those are two areas that you want to emphasize for this role. One of the reasons why I'm so excited about this opportunity is I want to take the expertise and skills that I've learned over the last three years and apply those to your strategy to help really accelerate where I can add a lot of impact for the role. Here's why this answer works. I use specific numbers to show my impact. I clearly connected how my past experience and skills are going to add value for the role, and I emphasized why I'm excited about the opportunity. Even with this framework, people still make mistakes when answering this interview question, so here are things you need to avoid. Number one is being too vague, saying something like, I've worked in marketing for a long time. This is incredibly vague and very forgettable. Number two is talking for too long. How long is too long, you ask? If you're talking for over five minutes, I can almost guarantee you've lost the interviewer. Try to keep your answer to two minutes or less. Remember, if they have follow-up questions, they'll certainly ask them, and then you have an opportunity to expand even more. Number three is no connection to the actual role that you're talking about. You would be amazed at how often people will answer this question but actually never connect the dots, and in some cases will articulate skills and experiences that have no relevance to the role whatsoever. Final tips to nail your answer. Be sure to practice out loud. You don't want to sound like a robot, but you also don't want to wing it. There's a balance in between those two, and the only way to find that balance is to say it and practice it out loud. Time yourself. When you start practicing out loud, use a timer. Ensure that you're actually answering the interview question in under two minutes. And lastly is you want to customize your answer for the specific role that you're interviewing for. If you utilize this simple framework, you will answer this question every time and come across as concise and confident.