How to Answer the 'Tell Me About Yourself' Question
 | Points to remember before you attend this interview question:
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How to Answer the 'Tell Me About Yourself' Question
She was earning $180K. She was so good, the company told the recruiter to just go ahead and send his invoice along with her resume.
The interview was just a formality, since they already knew she was exactly who they were looking for to fill the director-level position.
Standard opener: “So, tell me about yourself,” the interviewer asked.
“Well, as you can obviously see, I’m about 15 pounds overweight,” she said.
Oh, no, she didn't.
She goofed the “Tell Me About Yourself” question. She meant to bring an element of levity into the interview, but what the interviewer heard was a comment that showed a lack of self-confidence.
"That’s not the sort of thing you want to hear from a future director of the company!" says Paul Cameron, who knows the recruiter who worked with the unfortunate, would-be director.
The candidate had the skills and experience to do the job, says Cameron, president and senior technology recruiter for DriveStaffInc. She didn’t get the offer, though, specifically because of her answer to a single question meant merely as an icebreaker.
Many technical professionals have problems with this seemingly simple, ubiquitous interview question. People on the managerial track in technology don't have this problem. But those on the tech track find it simpler to answer questions about technical things: "I have such-and-such a skill base; I can do this; I can do that." Those are tech answers for a tech person, and that's fine. It's the other people, the people who are growing in their profession, who are moving up the ladder or who are on a specific managerial ladder in tech – those are the ones who have the trouble.
So here you go, o ye who hate this question, o ye who would rather just talk about skills and projects and who just can't fathom why open-ended, personal questions like TMAY have anything to do with the job at hand. Here's your cheat sheet.
Formulas for telling them about yourself
Not having an answer ready isn't an option. It's the most common question interviewers ask, so get ready to answer it before you head into the interview.
There are multiple decent formulas for how to construct an answer to, "Tell me about yourself." Regardless which you use, don't ramble. Your reply shouldn't go over three minutes at the maximum.
Beyond that, here are two good formulas.
This first formula comes from Cameron:
- Tell the interviewer(s) what you do professionally and how long you’ve been doing it.
- Follow with a summary of one notable accomplishment.
- Explain what you're looking for. Make sure it matches the job for which you're interviewing; your description should differ for every interview and should reflect the relevant, specific position.
- Give control back to the interviewer by asking a question about the position. This relieves her from worrying that you're going to ramble on all day.
- After the interviewer answers your question, you know what the organization's looking for. Use the knowledge to more accurately bring up the relevant experience in your background that's going to fill their needs.
Here's an example of how this formula works in a conversation, again from Cameron:
Interviewer: So, tell me about yourself.
Candidate: “I’m a C++ programmer with four years of experience. Just to give you a quick example of my experience, when I was at ABC Company, I initiated and developed a program that tracked consultants’ ‘reported hours worked’ in comparison to their ‘actual hours worked.’ It saved the company $10K that first quarter it was implemented, and it's still in use to this day. I’m looking for an opportunity to work on full lifecycle projects with C++ in a fast-paced financial trading environment. My career coach has told me a little about this position. Can you tell me exactly what the responsibilities are?”
This second formula is adapted from a recent posting by a Reddit user named nobic:
WAP, in which:
Work=80%
Attributes=15%
Personal=5%
TOTAL=No more than two minutes
Tell them about your work skills and attributes. Have 10 attributes ready, five of which you list. Out of those five, one of them should be your strongest one. Say a sentence or two about your strongest one. The other five are backups in case you are asked, "What are some of your strengths?"
Here's an example of what novic's answer might be:
"I have completed the Technical Writing Certificate at [educational venue], and I have worked as a technical writer for more than a year at [company 1] and [company 2]. At [company 1] I was in charge of reviewing the quality of online courses for the e-learning division of the company. At [company 2], I was in charge of writing documentation for features of the new version of their software, [software name], and making sure that the information provided was accurate and informative. I am very good at communicating information by attentive, patient, diligent, and excellent use of words. One of the main reasons why I went to school for technical writing is because I was complimented on my teaching abilities, where I put all those skills to use."
Taboo answers
There are so many ways to get the answer wrong. Here are a few no-no's:
Don't vent. In this economy, Cameron says, many people use their TMAY answers to vent. They vent about the tough job market, say, or maybe they ramble on about what the political administration has done to cause the recession.
"That's where a lot of people have lost it," Cameron says. Not smart. After all, this is typically the company's first impression of you. For the love of Buddha, don't make it negative.
Don't turn the answer back on the interviewer. The type of sophisticated interviewer who's likely to work with technical professionals most certainly doesn't want to hear this response to the TMAY question: "Well, what do you want to know?"
Turning the answer back on the interviewer lets him know you're an idiot. The question is the most commonly asked in an interview, so don't come off as if you didn't know it would be coming.
Don't be funny. Unless you're 100% sure it won't backfire. Which means you've either done your homework enough to understand an organization's culture, or you're far enough along in the interview process that you know the company's/interviewer(s)' sense of humor.
Don't blab about skills they don't want. If you choose to answer the TMAY question by mentioning, for example, the most challenging development job you've worked on, make damn sure you're talking about a skill they're after. Perhaps you can talk all day about your C++ experience. This is irrelevant if they're looking for Java, and you will have wasted X minutes of your precious "impress us" time. Research the job thoroughly before the interview so this doesn't happen.
Don't be negative. An oft-mentioned bit of advice is to avoid speaking negatively of prior employers or colleagues, since negativity reflects poorly on the speaker. But make sure to take advantage of the inverse, which is that positive speech reflects well on the speaker. Say good things about your prior experiences, and your interviewer will get the impression that you've got a fine character and are a good person. In reality, you might be a creep. But you're pleasant, at the very least.
Thus, if you choose to mention why you left your last position in your TMAY answer, instead of saying "I was laid off," you might mention that it was a great company, that you really enjoyed working with the people, but unfortunately, there was a restructuring, and you had to move on.
"You said the same thing, but it gave the interviewers one more reason to like you," Cameron says.
Don't get the culture wrong. A tech professional was scheduled for an interview at Microsoft. Marian Their, an executive coach and president of Listening Impact, was coaching him.
"What do you know about the culture of Microsoft? What do you know about their interviewing process?" she asked him.
"Nothing," he said.
"You better learn it," Their said. "They play games with people. They'll want to know if you'll be able to come up with very creative answers to puzzling questions. They want people who can think on their own, and who think of ideas that might not be, at first blush, what most might say."
Understand the culture
The response you give to TMAY are great indicators of how you'll fit in, Their says.
To find out the correct way to answer TMAY—correct as in giving an answer that shows you'll fit into the organization's culture—you need to network. Their knows what Microsoft's culture is like because she's worked with Microsoft people and talked with them about what it's like. If she can find out, so can you.
Know anybody at Microsoft? Or at the company where you want to interview? No? Well, Their would ask you how you got the interview. Did you send in your resume? Did they call or write to you to set up an interview? Yes?
Who called you?
That's where you might say "Uhhhh...."
Well, Their says. Go back to that person. Ask if they can help you understand questions you might be asked in an interview. If they won't, ask for names of people who've just gotten through the door.
They'll likely say, "No, we're not allowed to give out anybody's name." Or maybe they don't want you to be prepared; maybe they want to observe you as you think on your feet. That's OK. That's when you say, "Well, why do you do things that way? What type of candidates do you get that you think would be a good fit?"
That kind of interrogation is how you get to know the culture.
Once you understand the culture, you can structure your TMAY conversation. If you choose to end your TMAY response with a question, as Cameron suggests, you might choose to frame the question in a linear fashion for a more established, buttoned-down type of business, such as IBM. For a youngish, innovative type of company, such as Google, you might want to frame the question as more open-ended.
Examples:
Open-ended: "How do the best ideas come forward in this company?"
Linear: "What are the last three big successes for the company, and what kind of people brought them to fruition?"
Introverted geeky tech people's TMAY FUs
I can't not list these. They're too fun. Herewith, a few tales from the antisocial tech demographic:
1. Interviewer: Did you have trouble finding the place?
Candidate: [Fill in 10 minutes of exquisite detail about every wrong turn they took, including a lengthy condemnation about inclement weather.]
2. Engineering candidate: [Fidgets, tugs skirt hem] I never know what to say when they ask me to tell them about myself. What do they want to know, anyway? What does it have to do with the job they're hiring me for, anyway?
Career coach: Did you know you were wearing your dress inside out and backwards, and the tag's sticking out in front?
Engineering candidate: What difference does it make what I wear? Do they want my skills, or what?
Oh, honey. Yes, of course they want your engineering skills. But figure out how to map out an answer to TMAY that shows you're able to converse with homo sapiens.
And fix the dress.
