This is the most anticipated question in an interview is to “tell us about yourself”. There is no doubt that this is the most dreaded question. You do not want to sound arrogant or trying to sell yourself by giving all the positive information about your personality, education, and experience. The answers to the questions can sell your strength for the opportunity and downplay your negative traits.

The most anticipated and dreaded question “Tell us about Yourself”

Simple Solution To A Difficult Question: Prepare Your Answer to “Tell Us About Yourself”

The solution to this question is simple. Think of a scenario where you are sitting at your office, and one of your friends comes to meet you. How are you going to introduce your friends to your colleagues?

You will let your colleague know the name of your friend. Then give a brief background about the person. You will tell your colleagues where your friend is working or studying and some interesting facts. The basic objective during the introduction is to make that person interesting so that your colleagues would love to interact with your friend.

The same thing is happening during your initial introduction at the interview. The interviewer asked this question to let them know some interesting facts from you.

So, let me know how your friends will describe you in front of their colleagues or friends? Write down the answer, and it will be a draft copy to respond to the question to describe yourself as a person.

Tell Us About Yourself: Preparing The Complete Answer

But there are more things to consider before preparing the final answers to the question.
The employer asking this question want to know what type of person You are. And, will you be a good fit for the job for which you are applying.

As soon as you join the video call and exchanged pleasantries with interviewers, they may try to warm up the discussion by asking you to tell them about yourself. They ask this question to make you comfortable for the interview and give you a chance to present your credentials. Soon after, they will drive the conversation towards your functional and technical skills. Once they cover your skills related questions, then they will ask exploratory questions to know you as a person.

The interviewer will collect information by asking you questions regarding your work history, achievements, and logic behind different decisions taken during your career. They will also ask you questions to know the reason behind changing jobs. But most of those questions will give them an idea about you as a professional. You will get the opportunity to show your professional ethics and career aspiration through your answers. Once they know you as a professional, then they would like to know you as a person.

Describe Yourself As a Person

Now we will focus on questions you can expect during the interview to explore your personal character, ethics, and behavior. As discussed earlier, the employer would like to know you as a person. They would like to know how you will behave and work with their team. The hiring manager wants to have the best candidate available in the market, and at the same time, they want to avoid hiring a nuisance. They know that it takes time for a new member to accumulate with the team, and the team will take its own time to accept a new member. The personality and ego clash between the new member and the team will decide how much time they will need to accept each other.

Let us assume that the hiring manager would like to hire a person who can immediately be accepted by the team. Your preparation should focus on presenting you as a suitable candidate who is adaptable to a new environment and easy to work with.

It is nice meeting you. Could you tell us something about yourself?

We know that this is an open-ended question, and they want a descriptive answer from you. You can prepare to answer by focusing on information that you want to pass on to the interviewers

Your Answer Need To Be Relevant To The Job.

The answer should highlight your strength, relevance of your education, and work experience for the job. Relate your response to some of the bullet points in your resume.

This is the most common opening question by the interviewers, and you will get an opportunity to start your conversation with full confidence. You will be more confident to deal with subsequent questions by highlighting your selling point at the beginning of the interview. Your objective is to let them know that you are the best candidate available for the job. So do not jeopardize by being unprepared for this question.

The answer should be for two or three minutes. No one wants to know your complete biography. And you have to be conscious of the valuable time of the interviewers.

Now lets deep dive into the structure of the answer:

Tell Us About Yourself: Who Am I As a Person?

You can start by describing yourself as a person. Please answer needs to be in two or three sentences. You can start by saying that this is how my friends and colleagues describe me. You are making them comfortable by letting them know about you from third party points of view. This will sound more balanced approach and not as trying to seel yourself as a great person. As we have discussed earlier, they would like to know you as a member of the team. They want to know how well you can work with other people. The first part of the answer would give them an idea about you as a person.

How to prepare: Talk to a few of your friends and ask them how they would describe you as a person. Then you can note down their comments and prepare a short answer highlighting their observations.

Alternative Question: Hey, it is nice to meet you. We would like to know more about you during the interview. Why not start by giving us an idea about the background?

Thanks for the opportunity to meet all of you for this exciting opportunity. Let me start with how my friends and colleagues would describe me, and then I will give you a brief overview of my experience and background.

My friends and colleagues would describe me as an optimistic, hardworking, and fun-loving person to work with. (keep it as brief as possible to let them know what to expect of you as a member of their team).

Tell Us About Yourself: Who Am I As A Professional

Next: I am currently working with XYZ as ABC.

The next part of the answer will focus on your experience relevant to the job. You will highlight your experience relevant to the job and some of the significant achievements in your career.

We have discussed earlier your transferable skills and where you have used those skills to achieve success. This answer to highlight your suitable experience and achievements can take a major portion of your time. You can highlight relevant achievements and experiences that you have gained through your past job. Let them know that those experiences and achievements will make you the best candidate for the job.

This part of the answer will brag about your achievement and impress them to know more about you. You can feel uncomfortable to brag about your achievement without sounding arrogant. Your friends can help you overcome this shyness. Give your pitch a few times to some of your friends and get their feedback. Then compile their constructive feedback, and summarize the pitch.

The discussion and feedback from your friends will make you comfortable to describe your achievements at the interview. One more thing to note down, the hiring manager would be more interested to know your recent achievements. The current or recent most achievements are more relevant to them for their decision-making process.

Structure Of Your Answer

You can structure your answer:
When and where you were working,
What was the achievement and
How it benefitted you and the company.

We have already noted down the achievements while preparing your resume. Find relevant achievements to the job at hand and then relate your answers to the job responsibilities. This will help the interviewers to value your experience for the position.

Answer: I am currently working with XYZ company as ABC (Position). I enjoy my role and achieved ( describe a few achievements in recent jobs). I have achieved success in my recent jobs, and those skills and experience would be useful to this position. If you want then I would love to talk in detail about those achievements.

After giving some details, you can ask them if they want to know more. This approach will indicate that you have more to say, but you want to be sure that they want to hear additional information. You value their time and would be happy to provide more relevant information if they want to know more about you.

Now you have answered their questions and prepared the groundwork to show them your experience and achievements.

The interviewer will again come back to know more about you in the latter part of the interview. At that time, they will ask more in-depth questions to know you as a person. Followings are some of the most commonly asked questions, and you can practice the response for job interviews.

Please do not expect the questions in the same order or using the same words. The hiring manager can ask you the same questions articulated differently and in a different order.

Regular practice to deliver the response to the following questions will make you more confident to respond to the hiring managers. Remember your answer needs to be as authentic as possible. Do not try to memorize it and give a monotonous pitch.

Question: Tell us a few of your strengths? Or, they can ask you to highlight some of your strengths relevant to the job?

You can respond to this by going through your transferable skills link and rank them on the usefulness. Pick the top three or four of your strength from the list and build your response around those skills.

Question: If we talk to your former colleague and ask about you, what would they say about your work and relationships with them?

The interviewers are trying to find out the value addition that you can bring to the team. To prepare for the answer, talk to your current or former colleagues. Ask them what do they like most about you. They may let you know some of your key strengths. That feedback will help you in answering with confidence. They may let you know that you are good in crisis management, self-dependent, and who tried to execute the work with fewer problems. Talk to your colleagues and ask them what characteristics they like in you while working on the same project.
This activity will give you confidence in preparing a genuine answer. You will also find it easy to express in front of the interviewer when you know that this is the feedback you got from your friends or colleagues. When you are asking them about your strengths, then they definitely will give you positive information. Those are your strengths.

Answer: I think they would say that I am…(highlight your quality as a professional)……….and I get work done easily. They would also say that they enjoyed working with me because (highlight your quality as a team member).

How would your colleagues and friends describe your work ethics?

Here you can explain to the interviewer that your friends would like to describe you as someone who has strong Work Ethics, is committed to the work, and support the team to be successful. The hiring manager is actually looking for information that validates you as a team player and committed to your work.

There are other questions to find your strength, weakness, personality, etc. This is more related to interpersonal skills and behavioral attributes. It makes sense to ask your friends and colleagues to get their views on you. Whatever information you will get will definitely help you to prepare a response to behavioral questions.

The followings are some of the questions that you will come across during the interview.

Question: Now you have told us about your strengths, can you give some idea about your weakness?

Question: Have you ever get any complaints from your colleagues about your work Style?
How to prepare your answer:
It is not possible to work in a team environment and not getting criticized by colleagues. It does not mean that the complaint is about any negative behavior. Here you can mention the complaints you received from your team members, and that is actually good for the company. For example, you can tell them that sometimes you get hyperactive and try to achieve an aggressive target. But, your colleagues complain that you are trying to put yourself for failures by putting such a high or aggressive objective. Sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are wrong.

Your colleagues are also a good source of information to know about your weakness. There might be a chance that you will get an unfiltered message from your friends, which will help you to improve your personality. But most of the time, your friends and colleagues may not give you an honest answer. They may not be openly critical of you.

Interviewer: What are your weaknesses?

The above question is another version of the last question.

You can also expect the following questions during the initial phase of the interview. Please go through this article, and you will get tips to prepare for the following questions.

Tell us some of your recent achievements.
Tell us some of your magnificent failures.
How do you celebrate your success?
How do you manage failures?