How to Ace the "Tell Me About Yourself" Interview Question

Tell me about yourself. This is the hardest interview question I think for a whole lot of people.

Tell me about yourself. This is the hardest interview question I think for a whole lot of people. I've been, I'm a recruiter, I've been doing this for 20 plus years. I've got a business helping people craft their tell me about yourself stories. And here's why I think this really freaks people out. It is a question that you're going to have to talk about yourself. It is an open ended question. You, you don't really know how far back into your career people are looking for you to go. So you start at the beginning, which for some of us can be a very long time ago. It feels a little bit like it's a test, like what are you expecting me to say? Is this personal? Is this professional? And people just don't really know how to handle it. And so in the moment that it happens, if you have not really prepared for this, your brain freezes. And, and like I said, you start back at the beginning, like, hey, I graduated from college when. And I'm like, oh my God, are they seriously going to talk about college? And this is where we are making our first impression with each other. So what I want to say to those of you that really struggle with this, there is a very clear framework to think about it. Most interviewers really only care about the last five years of your experience. That's where you've done the work that is of most interest to me in the job that you are applying to. So you frame your tell me about yourself with two to three very broad sentences about your background, the industries you've worked for, the sizes of companies you've worked for, et cetera. And then you share with me a project, a initiative, a sales goal, whatever it is that you're really proud of that aligns directly with the role that you are interviewing for. And then you close the conversation with why the company and why the role. And all of that should take place in roughly under 2 minutes, minutes time. So I hope that that's helpful. Drop into the comments, any questions that you have and good luck out there. Practice.