A difficult question
I received an email from a student where he asked: “I had several job interviews; I thought I did well until a difficult question come up. They asked: “Tell me about yourself” and I did not know what to say. I explained to them about my family, my hobby, and my friends. Somehow they seemed to be losing interest and they let me go. I do not know how to answer this question. Please advice.”
Answer: “This is a common question that often comes up during a job interview but you should never talk about everything. The interviewer is not interested in knowing about your family or your friends. You want to know more about you whether you are the right person for the job or not. Do not quickly tell them everything but you must find out about their intention before giving an answer. You should ask: "Is there a particular aspect of my background that you would like more information on?" This will enable the interviewer to give you specific things to focus on so you can avoid telling them unnecessary things that may be inappropriate.
Regardless of the given direction you should focus on important facts about your professional career. Whatever you say must refer to your personal skills such as teamwork skills, soft-skills and your characters such as honesty, integrity, or compassion. You are applying for a job and what the company is interested in is whether you will fit in their company or not. Since they probably already ask you about your technical skills so this is the question about your characters. You may mention about being a team member in a capstone project and how you work well with others. You may tell a story about your activities outside the school such as you often volunteer to help poor people, flood victims, or orphan children in the local orphanage. Your answer should create an impression to the interviewer that you have the “right fit” to the job that you applied. You are the person who work hard, whether in school or outside of school. You work well with people, from classmates to friends. You are a compassionate person who volunteers to help other unfortunate people such as orphans or flood victims. Or you may describe yourself as a leader who is voted the head of the class and give example from your activities that indicates an ability to lead others in school activities.
This is a common question but many students often fail because they do not know the intention of the question. This is not the time to tell them everything about your family and your relatives or your hobby of video games or music etc. It is really about those aspects of your personality so they can determine whether you are the right person for their company or not.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
