Handling the Dreaded "Tell Me About Yourself" Question

Most of us don’t like to rattle on about ourselves, so the job-interview question “Tell me about yourself” can easily throw us for a loop. Where do we start? Do we talk about growing up in Kansas, or jump into our career as a cost accountant? We’re paralyzed, wondering, “What does the interviewer want to hear?”

Our instinct to wonder what the interviewer will find relevant is a good one. The big mistake job seekers make when asked “Tell me about yourself!” is that they launch into a rambling story. The interviewer leans back in his chair, and here’s what he’s thinking: “If I can get outta this interview in 55 minutes, I can still get to the dry cleaner before it closes….”

We begin to lose the interviewer the minute we start talking about ourselves. As we tell our story, no matter how gripping it is, the interviewer isn’t learning in any substantive way whether or not we can do the job. The only way we’ll be able to get close to the mark (what the employer needs in its next cost accountant or office manager, that is) is to ask a question. But we’ve been asked a question ourselves. Can we turn that question around?

We can! Here are three ways to shift the “Tell me about yourself” request into a question that will let us dig into the employer’s business pain—the reason the job opening exists in the first place.

Let’s imagine that the interviewer says, “So, Justin, tell me about yourself.”

You’ll say something like one of these three things:

1. “Okay! I don’t want to keep you here for hours, though. Could I ask you a question or two in order to tailor my remarks?”

2. “For sure. I’m an office manager, as you know. I’m very focused on desktop publishing and newsletter creation, and I love to manage projects and my boss’s schedule. Shall we talk about day-to-day office management, or shall I tell you about some projects I’ve run?”

3. “Perfect. I was born in Minnesota and went to school there, before moving to this area three years ago—and now, to make my story more relevant, may I ask you a couple of questions about the situation here at XYZ Foods?”

Your trusty gut already knows that any way you respond to the command “Tell me about yourself” runs the risk of being 100 percent irrelevant to the interviewer. We can use our interview “air time” to learn more about the position and to discover where the interviewer’s interests lie. Then we can talk about something that our conversational partner will care about! That’s a much more satisfying feeling, believe me!

About the Author:

Liz Ryan is a 25-year HR veteran, a former Fortune 500 VP, and an internationally recognized expert on careers and the new-millennium workplace. Connect with her at www.asklizryan.com. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s.)