Job Interview Question "Tell Me About Yourself" How To Answer.

tell me about yourself go now don't pretend you don't love being asked this in a job interview in this video we're going to be talking about the best answer to tell me about yourself and some of the things that you should never ever say and we're going to decode this question why are recruiters asking it what are they hoping to get and what's going on behind the scenes let's Dive In okay this question tell me about yourself usually it's an icebreaker they ask this to you when you first get into the room and you sit down at the table to do the job interview this is usually some way of getting some kind of conversation or interaction going in the beginning and as a result you don't want to spend too much time on it okay the second thing is that this is such an insultingly and infuriatingly general question I mean is it possible to get a more general question in this I suppose they could ask you you know tell me a random thing that would be a general question but only slightly less General is this tell me something about you right now how do you answer do you tell them your height your weight and your food dislikes would that be a good answer probably not right here's what's going on okay now if you've done a job interview before you probably are aware that it's possible to meet all the technical requirements for the job as listed in the job posting under requirements but still not get the job right there's obviously more going on than simply meeting the post to job requirements there's obviously other things they're looking for that they're not explicitly telling you about and that's where this question fits in okay now let's step back for a second okay let's step back a couple of things here what is your purpose in a job interview I'll tell you what your purpose is your purpose is to communicate your value to the interviewer now more specifically what do you mean by value well they're looking for certain things certain things have been stated explicitly in the job posting certain things are kept hidden right you don't know what are the hidden things they're looking for but you do know what they have explicitly said we are looking for Okay so let's step back a second what is your purpose in the job interview well the big one is to communicate your value and how you meet all the job requirements that they've said now if you didn't meet those okay if you didn't meet enough of them for it to make sense they wouldn't have called you in for the interview so you don't have to be afraid of doing this okay that is after all while you're there you're not at the job interview to talk about something you did 10 years ago at a different company that has nothing to do with this job nothing to do with this role and all it does is it takes up time okay that's the thing we got to stay on task now uh that's the other reason why when we answer tell me about yourself we don't want it to go on for very long we don't want to give a very long answer here it's General we don't know what they're probing for and it's an icebreaker it just serves to get the conversation started what we want is to get past this question so that they can be much more specific in the things that they're asking us about and then we know what we're doing we know what to say okay that's the first point to remember second point to remember once again let's step back for a second okay what has happened in the process up to now well we sent in our job application usually with our resume attached and upon receiving and presumably reading our resume what did they do did they eliminate us no they invited us in for an interview so what's the conclusion the material that's on the resume is safe none of that material was considered a red flag none of that material was considered insufficient to investigate you further so this is the material we're going to fall back on when we have no idea what they're probing for it's just that simple okay now let's combine some of these into an answer okay if they ask you in a job interview tell me about yourself especially if it's right at the beginning of the interview a great answer that tends to work really really well is to start by saying well as you can see from my resume just like that well as you can see from my resume and then you go down your resume and summarize it in reverse chronological order usually you start off with your education and then you do your work experience starting from your oldest stuff to your latest okay now you're wanting to summarize it briefly you don't want to spend a lot of time here okay because we're still at the Icebreaker so this whole thing should ideally take somewhere in the neighborhood of about 45 seconds that's that's the amount of time that you talk for you don't want to talk for more than this because you wanna keep more of your talking time for demonstrating how you meet the requirements and how you have value okay so that's what you do and you conclude with the phrase and that's what brings me here today and why I'm excited to learn more about this opportunity okay that's a great answer now let's Dive In okay some people will ask well what if they're already familiar with your resume well I say great that's great they should be familiar with your resume a lot of recruiters are actually not they have scanned your resume back when they invited you for an interview but that could have been weeks ago a lot of times in my experience recruiters do not have that much time to scan and revise resumes immediately before job interviews sometimes it happens there are some good recruiters out there that do this but most of the time they don't and a lot of people will attest to the fact that when they get to the job interview the recruiter is actually unfamiliar with their background and so when they ask this question it serves to inform the recruiter and give them a little bit of a crash course of who you are so then they can ask more intelligent questions afterwards okay now if they are familiar with your resume that's great they wanted to know about you and what you did is you gave them the most fundamental relevant information about you to start the interview and that's a great way to start a lot of times some recruiters will have very specific things in mind when they ask this question and they'll make it an impossible guessing game they'll say tell me about yourself and then you answer and they'll say well no no no I wanted to hear about your interests now that is unanswerable okay this most candidates are not mind readers and if you are the most intuitive person in the world you would still have a problem at this with this kind of guessing game okay um an answer I've heard a lot is to say talk about your personality talk about your interest talk about your hobbies talk about your Ambitions talk about you know your your uh you know your future plans or something like that I would say no don't do any of that that's very dangerous to do because once again we don't know what constitutes their hidden elimination criteria like the sports team example I've seen this with my own eyes I've seen a candidate eliminated in a job interview because they said that they supported a certain sports team and unbeknownst to that candidate the hiring manager supported the opposing sports team and the hiring manager had determined that well you know it's probably going to be hard having a very good working relationship with this person knowing that they're rooting for the opposing team to what I am and So based on that I'm going to eliminate them I've seen this that's an extreme example but we do get this a lot okay we get all kinds of hidden elimination criteria that are red flags that you know nothing about so when you're asked this question without knowing what direction the conversation is going to go in and what they're looking for the best thing to do in the Icebreaker is to stick to your safe material okay and that way the conversation can take many different directions afterwards they can ask you about accomplishments they can ask you about specific jobs they can ask you about skills and experience it can go wherever they want okay um now there's one point I want to make and that is that the first phrase of the answer that I recommend which is well um as you can see from my resume that's more of a memory jog for you okay if you really feel uncomfortable saying that you can eliminate that phrase it's more of just to set the sort of stage for what you're going to say next okay uh a lot of times it depends on how you say it you don't want to say it in the condescending way well as you can see from my resume I've done this right you don't want to do that uh but if you are unable to do it subtly just eliminate the phrase that's fine it's more of a memory jog okay um now if you do encounter an interviewer that will rake you over the coals for not reading their mind and giving them specific information about something they were thinking of like your personality or interests or Ambitions or your family or your home situation or any of that stuff that you know you were supposed to somehow read into it a great way to challenge that is to basically say certainly what would you like to know you know if they say no I was asking you about your interest you say certainly what would you like to know right and you let them be more specific okay um hopefully that makes sense to everybody uh this is a very common question that I get it's probably the number one most requested question that people have on my YouTube channel how do you answer this question hopefully that makes sense to you thank you very much for watching you guys are awesome and I will see you soon take care

Channel: The Companies Expert

Views: 20,331

Keywords: Tell me about yourself, tell me about yourself interview question, tell me about yourself interview, interview questions, interview questions and answers, tell me about yourself question and answer example, tell me about yourself answer, tell me about yourself answer example, tell me about yourself example, tell me about yourself example answer for fresh graduate, tell me something about yourself sample answer, tell me something about yourself, interview answers

Id: f35CvZxZThQ

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023