Tell Me About Yourself - The Perfect Interview Answer

okay so tell me about yourself well um i was uh born that is not how you answer the tell me about yourself interview question well not least if you actually want to get hired into the role that you're applying for now what do you do instead in this video i'm going to tell you the three-step process that i teach my clients on how to get hired using the tell me about yourself question because actually it's a fantastic question most people in the interview process are terrified about being asked that question or something similar when in fact you can switch it around and you can use it to your own advantage and that's what i'm going to tell you about in this video and honestly if you haven't got a few minutes to dedicate to learning this process then your interview is going to be so much harder so i really recommend that you watch this and really take note of these three very simple but very important steps and if you want to understand how to get more interviews particularly by using the hidden job market which is what i'm all about click the subscribe button you'll get more videos all about this and much much more so step number one how do you answer this question now first off what you need to understand is that when the interviewer asks tell me about yourself that's not actually the full question they've missed off the end what the full question actually is and what they're trying to to get out of you is this tell me about yourself as it relates to this role okay same way as walk me through your resume as it relates to this role always the same always always the same so the first thing that i want you to understand and take away from this is that what matters to the interviewer not you the interviewer is why do i care why do i care about what you're saying do i care where you were born do i care about the thing that you did 30 years ago do i care about your extracurricular activities at university which are irrelevant to the job that i'm hiring for no i don't care about any of those things what i care about are the things that relate to what i'm hiring for and that's why when it comes to answering this question you should have done your research research and preparation is the most important thing when it comes to an interview okay you pass the interview before you arrive in that room that is the most important thing that you can possibly do so if you understand two things all right well actually one thing with two with two parts okay when a company hires somebody they do it for a specific reason they don't hire someone for fun and there's two reasons why they hire people number one is to solve an issue to solve a pain right to solve a problem and number two is to exploit an opportunity sometimes it can be both depending on what the role is but if you can understand right at a deep level what it is that that company is trying to do when they hire this person when they when they want to hire you if you can understand that your your life is going to be so much easier and you are going to be up here your chances are going to be here everyone else is going to be down here okay so when it comes back to that question tell me about yourself as it relates to this role well you already understand what the pain they're trying to solve or the opportunity that they're trying to exploit by hiring this person and so you can tailor your answer for what that is so that the hiring manager or the interviewer or the hiring director or whoever it is is going to think to themselves hey this person already gets it right the stuff that they've done in the past really makes sense in relation to what we need and that is how you start answering that question you prepare in advance for the question because you already already understand what those pains are what those opportunities are and then you mold your answer around that okay so point number two and you might be thinking to yourself okay i understand that i understand that i'm not supposed to just give my random life story i'm actually supposed to focus it on these opportunities or pains that i'm supposed to supposed to solve or help exploit but how do i do that well this is where we get down to what we call a value proving story so what you need to talk about when you answer that question is something or usually what one two three things that you've done which relate to that pain or that opportunity so let's say the company wants somebody to solve a an operational issue that they're facing right now okay you've already done your research you understand that that's one of the issues that they're facing now you talk about something in your past where you have done exactly that or something similar right if you're switching careers you talk about something similar to that so you talk about the two or three things that you've done that relate to the pain or the opportunity that company is trying to uh exploit or solve as i said if you can do that not only will the interviewer think that whatever you're talking about well first of all they'll be interested in it but they will also understand how it relates to them because what so many people do is they expect the interviewer to make the leap they expect the hiring team to make the jump between what you've done in the past and what you're going to do in the future in that role that's not their job right it's your job to help them make that determination that determination between how is what you've done in the past relate to what you're going to do in future and that's why when you're answering this question it's so important to get that right so make sure that you understand what those pains are and those opportunities are and then make sure that you have a story one two two or three is the best to really relate to what you've done in the past and focus on what they need you to do in the future right that gives you the best foundation for answering that question and then finally what often happens in interviews particularly with these type of questions is that people are prone to ramble on and as you may know people's attention spans these days are so low people do not have do not have the attention to just listen to you rambling on about all these random things so every single interview answer that you give should be a maximum of two and a half minutes maximum right i have interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people right i've been running my own company for the past four or five years i was a hiring director at one of the biggest companies in the world i've undertaken so many interviews and i know exactly what it's like when people ramble on and on and on you get bored you do not want to bore the interview if you bore the interviewer game over you need to keep them engaged and the way you do that is by following the three steps that i just spoke about then make sure that you make it about them why should they care secondly have a story which is going to do just that and thirdly keep it below two and a half minutes if you do all those things the your answer is going to be fantastic and you should follow that exact process for all of your interview questions now i'm going to be recording more videos about how you answer specific questions because we teach our clients there's so many different ways to do this to answer every single type of question there are traditional questions behavioral questions technical questions project based questions brain teaser questions there's many many questions you could get in an interview so click that subscribe button and you will get in notified when i release more of these videos and also check out my videos about how to get hired through the hidden job market how to secure interviews at 10 or 20 times the rate that you would if you're just applying through job boards excited to hear what you say let me know in the comments if you have ever struggled with this question or answers you've given or where you might have failed and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: James Whittaker - The Ambitious Exec

Views: 19,181

Keywords:

Id: Jumb2m46AIc

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021