Tell Me About Yourself - Structure a Strong Answer
Most people realize that a good answer to the tell me about yourself question sets the tone for the rest of the interview. What some people miss is that a great answer will help you influence what the interviewer will ask next. In this video, I skip all the common advice you might find in other tutorials and dive right into number one, how to structure a strong answer using the present, past and future answer format. Number two, how to use the highlight method to influence the interviewer. And number three, leave you with an answer I'd give if I were interviewing right now.
Although there is no one-size-fits all answer to the tell me about yourself interview question, there is a strong answer structure that is universally applicable. So while I do provide a sample answer at the end, the main takeaway of this video should be the methods I use and how you can apply the same structure for your own use cases.
Number one, using the present, past and future answer structure. Interviewers want to know in order of importance, who you are right now, how you got to be there, and what value you can bring to the role you're interviewing for. Present, past and future. Starting with the present, this is a snapshot of yourself in your current professional capacity. It should be kept within one minute and include the following. What you do in your current role, the success metrics you are measured against, and a recent achievement you are particularly proud of.
If you're working professional, the present portion might look something like this. I'm currently a management consulting with Ernst and Young focus on Finance Shared Service Center projects. My primary contributions to the team are number one, organizing training workshops for our clients adopting the new SAP system. And number two, putting together pitch decks through market research for future business development opportunities. A recent one I'd like to share is when I use data from a free trial of eMarketer to put together a deck on B2B marketing trends in China, which ended up helping my senior manager close a $500,000 deal.
By stating your current role right off the bat, you show the interviewer that first and foremost, you are a professional. This will also help you stay away from going off topic into something too personal and therefore irrelevant. The town you grew up in, the musical you're a part of. Then mentioning your own success metrics shows that you are results oriented. You know exactly what your goals are on the job. It also shows you're confident in your capabilities, because why else would you bring it up? Finally, the impactful achievement that you briefly touch on keeps the interviewer engaged with your story and plants follow up questions in their minds. Wow, which eMarketing report was this? Why was the client sold on the B2B marketing trends? And we'll talk about this concept of influence a bit more later on.
Although the example I gave just now was for working professional, if you're a current student, you can use the exact same structure. Simply start off by saying what field of study you're in, then dive immediately into recent class projects, internships, and leadership experiences. Don't worry about the impressiveness level of your story, but rather the qualities you're conveying about yourself as you tell it.
If you found this first tip helpful, drop a like and comment down below to help me with the YouTube algorithm as they say. Now on to the past portion of your answer. This is where you really get to show off and highlight key strengths or takeaways you want the interviewer to remember. This part should be another minute maximum. Coming up with stories that make you look good is easy. Keeping them concise, relevant and under one minute is hard. So here's what we wanna do.
First identify two to three attributes you feel the role is looking for. If it's sales, this would be communication, stakeholder management. If it's accounting, this might be attention to detail, strong analytical skills.
Then scroll through your mental Rolodex of experiences, projects, internships, to figure out which ones best suit the attributes they're looking for.
Finally, and this might be the hardest step, select one key moment within each experience to serve as the highlight of that experience.
If you're a student interviewing for a marketing position, your past portion might look something like this.
As the events coordinator for our business fraternity, I'm responsible for planning, executing, and tracking our weekly workshops. Since this requires a lot of promotional marketing materials such as fiscal flyers and email newsletters, I took the initiative to try free online tools such as Canva and MailChimp to better engage our members. After other student bodies noticed our new marketing materials, they actually came asking for help. And so I conducted a small group training for 30 other event coordinators as a result. The training received a satisfaction score of 98%.
Some of you might be thinking right now, well, Jeff, her experience is related to marketing. So that was an easy answer. I'm applying to a role I don't have much experience in.
Okay, imagine the same candidate were applying for an accounting position. In that case, the same event coordinator should focus on how she managed the budget for the entire year and how she kept track of her fraternity's expenses. As you can see, the same experience can be and should be applicable for the different attributes you want to highlight.
Finally, the future portion, this is just a quick 30-second wrap-up where you reinforce the reasons why you're such a good fit for the role. The objective here is that the interviewer imagines ever so slightly how it makes such good sense for you to be on their team.
Following the previous example, let's just say that our event coordinator is applying for the accounting position. Her future portion might look something like this.
As someone who has been managing our fraternity's finances for the past year, I'm glad to have been able to apply the concepts that I learned in my accounting classes in real-life situations. This has further reinforced my interest in pursuing accounting as a full-time career. My experiences combined with my international background make me a strong asset to the Financial Advisory Services team at Ernst and Young.
By the way, I have a Facebook group where I share weekly tips, consider joining if you haven't already, I'll link it down below.
Number two, the highlight method. In a nutshell, the highlight method is where you take a small part of a larger story that you have already prepared for and only include that part in the tell me about yourself answer as a highlight. This helps you keep your answer concise while mentioning something impressive.
If done right, the highlight that you mentioned should trigger the interviewer to ask follow-up questions that lead to your larger story. If you've been paying attention up to this point, you've probably already noticed that we've been sprinkling in highlights throughout the present past and future answer structure.
For example, in the present portion, the US$ 500,000 deal that you helped close is the highlight, and you should have the rest of the story prepared using the star format.
All right, putting that together, here's a sample answer I'd give if I were interviewing right now.
So Jeff, could you tell me a bit about yourself?
Sure, I'm currently a product marketer here at Google covering the Greater China region. I mainly work on App campaigns, a Google product aimed at app developers. Specifically, I have two objectives: number one, to reach as many new-to-Google app developers as possible.
And number two, increase product adoption among our existing app advertisers.
My team and I achieve these goals through a mix of online marketing campaigns, offline events and content marketing.
For example, one of the tentpole events I helped launch is called Start on Android China, where we leverage resources from our Play, Ads and AdMob teams to deliver a comprehensive training bootcamp for Greater China App Developers.
The goal is to address their pain points at each stage of their app export journey. A notable achievement was when we decided to pivot from a three-day offline event format to a three-week online one. That actually resulted in a five times increase in eligible signups before marketing,
I was a key account manager in the sales team covering around 30 B2C Chinese exporters. Since that's quite a few clients for just one person to cover. I actually created YouTube videos to better engage my clients at scale. Funny story, you can still actually find those videos on YouTube right now.
This in addition to the support for cross functional team members helped me achieve revenue attainment without missing targets for two years straight.
Before joining Google, I was a management consultant with Ernst and Young for two years. One year based out of New York City and another out of Shanghai, I worked on a variety of projects ranging from supply chain management to shared service centers. Due to the nature of these projects, I would often find myself as the only consultant physically on site, and therefore I was really able to develop my communication and relationship management skills.
Having spent the past six years in predominantly client-facing roles, I believe the communication skills I've developed, combined with my international background, would make me a strong asset to your global business development team. (claps)
And there you have it a step by step guide on how to nail the tell me about yourself interview question. I sincerely believe this is the most important interview question to get right. Not only because it sets the tone for the rest of the interview, but also if you do get it right, it gives you a huge confidence boost right at the beginning.
I hope this video helped. Subscribe if you haven't already, and comment down below if you have any questions. See you on the next video and in the meantime, (clicks) have a great one.
