Answering “Tell Me About Yourself” Interview Question With Ease

Answering: “Tell e About Yourself” could sound so difficult for some people to answer. If you are facing this same challenge, I’m going to walk you through steps and examples of how to answer the “Tell me about yourself” interview question to impress employers and get more job offers.

In this article, you’ll find tips on what to avoid in your answer, how to structure your response and how you can get started. Additionally, at the end of our article, you will find a detailed “Tell me about yourself” sample answer.

Why Do Interviewers Ask This Question?

As with any interview question, the key to crafting an impressive answer is understanding why people are asking in the first place.

“It lets them ease into the actual interviewing,” says Alina Campos, Muse career coach and founder of The Coaching Creative. “Often when the conversation starts it’s a lot of small talks and it’s a way to transition into it,” especially for less seasoned recruiters or hiring managers. “The interviewee’s nervous but the interviewer’s trying to get their bearings [too].”

It’s also a great starting point that can help inform the direction of the interview, says Muse career coach and CareerSchooled founder Al Dea: “Depending on what you say it’s going to help them figure out the next question,” which might help start a chain effect of follow-up questions and lend an easy flow to the conversation.

Beyond serving as an icebreaker and transition, Dea says, this introductory question also helps recruiters and hiring managers to accomplish what’s often one of their major goals in the hiring process: getting to know you.

If you answer it well, the interviewers will begin to find out why you’re the best candidate for this job, in terms of hard skills and experience as well as soft skills. It’s a great opportunity to demonstrate that you can communicate clearly and effectively, connect with and react to other humans, and present yourself professionally.

There are plenty of times when you’ll hear these exact words: “Tell me about yourself.” But interviewers might have their versions of the prompt that are asking pretty much the same thing, including:

• I have your resume in front of me but tell me more about yourself.
• Walk me through your experiences.
• I’d love to hear more about your journey.
• Tell me a little bit more about your background.

A Simple Formula for Answering “Tell Me About Yourself”

Lily Zhang, Manager of Graduate Student Professional Development at the MIT Media Lab and a writer for The Muse, recommends a simple and effective formula for structuring your response: present, past, future.

• Present: Talk a little bit about what your current role is, the scope of it, and perhaps a big recent accomplishment.
• Past: Tell the interviewer how you got there and/or mention the previous experience that’s relevant to the job and company you’re applying for.
• Future: Segue into what you’re looking to do next and why you’re interested in this gig (and a great fit for it, too).

This isn’t the only way to build your response, of course, and you can tweak it as you see fit. If there’s a particularly potent story about what brought you into this field, for example, you might decide to start with that “past” story and then get into what you’re doing in the present.

Whatever order you pick, make sure you ultimately tie it to the job and company. “A good place to end it is to give a transition of this is why I’m here,” Dea says. You want to be certain your interviewer is left with the impression that it “makes sense that [you’re] sitting here talking to me about this role.”

How to Plan Your Answer?

Even for common interview questions, it can be hard to get started crafting your response. To keep you on track, here are a few questions to ask as you brainstorm ways to respond and structure your answer:

What qualities make you a ?

Think of what makes you stand out as a job great fit for this position applicant for this role. Perhaps it’s your years of experience or some highly desired specialization, training, or technical skills. Review the job description closely and note ways that you exceed the requirements.

Why are you interested in the role?

Brainstorm why this position excites you, how it fits into your larger career goals and why you feel it’s the best next step.

Why are you interested in the company or the industry?

After you’ve spent time researching the company and the industry, you should have a better sense of the mission, goals, and trends impacting the industry. Do these align with the professional goals that you’ve set for yourself? What do you like and respect about the company as a whole?

What excites you about the future of the industry? As you start building your story, tie together similarities among your professional goals, the future vision of the company, and industry trends you feel are especially important.

What are the positive traits or characteristics you possess that will serve you well in this role?

For example, have friends or colleagues described you as especially organized? Curious? Entrepreneurial? Generous? Think about how you’ve long thought of yourself or how others have seen you. Then, think of recent examples from your life when you embodied that characteristic.

Sample “Tell Me About Yourself” Answer

Wondering what exactly a great “Tell me about yourself” response sounds like? Use the following for inspiration:

From my childhood years spent scribbling down three-paragraph fairy tales in my blanket fort to an intensive but incredibly gratifying creative writing program in college, I’ve always been a storyteller at heart. So when it came time to look for a job, there was no doubt in my mind that writing and storytelling had to play a key role in my career.
I did a couple of internships that helped me hone my marketing skills one in a Technical Writing role where I worked with internal stakeholders to produce engaging instructional videos and presentations for our company-wide intranet site, and a Hispanic Marketing role where I created a data-driven creative marketing plan, which resulted in an increase in market share from #3 to #2 in my assigned region.
For my first full-time position, though, I wanted to get closer to my storytelling roots, so I accepted a position as a content writer at a creative communications agency. In my current role, I’m tasked with strategizing, executing and optimizing social media, blog post, case study and byline programs.
I get to work with Global 500 companies, place stories in top-tier publications and ultimately generate interest in my clients and elevate their reputations, but I’m often torn between too many different goals. Instead, I want to concentrate all of my efforts behind one company whose mission I really believe in.
If chosen to be the Staff Writer/Content Marketer at StudentsandScholarship, however, I know I’d be able to strike a balance between producing engaging, creative, high-quality content and working towards something truly meaningful — helping people find jobs and companies they love.
What’s more, I’ll have a lot to offer my team and the company as a whole, including relevant experience, a proven track record of success, an eagerness to collaborate and an unyielding passion for the written word.

Important Reads:

Practice Your Answer Before the Interview

As a final tip, make sure you go practice everything you plan on saying when the interviewer asks, “what can you tell me about yourself?”

Nothing comes out perfect the first time, and you don’t want to appear nervous and stumble when they ask.

So I’d recommend grabbing a piece of paper and writing down the key points you want to talk about in your answer. I like to write them in bullet format.

Then, use your smartphone’s voice recorder app to record a few practice answers and see how you sound.

Don’t look at your notes as you give your answer. The idea is to try to remember what you want to talk about without reading off the paper. Then glance at the paper after to make sure you covered everything.

Keep practicing until you can give a smooth answer without forgetting anything important.

Note: If you’re having a phone interview, you can use notes/bullet points to help guide you through your answer. Nobody can see you on the phone, so take advantage!

Take a bold step now, go out there and face it with courage! Bless your friends too by sharing this article with them.

StudentsandScholarship Team.