I’ve got a job interview on Tuesday and I haven’t had one for a while due to a period of unemployment because of family health issues.
One part of interviews I’ve always struggled with is when they first ask you to tell them about yourself. I struggle to talk about myself anyway and never know what they’d like me to actually say, whether it’s about me as a person or about my work history.
So any tips or tricks would be welcome.
“To truly understand, we’ll have to go back to the summer of 1979…”
“Picture it, Sicily, 1912…” “Now erase that completely from your mind, and picture Gary, Indiana, 2023. You’re right, that’s me.”
I spend time highlighting how my past experience relates to the job and what I like about the place or job specifically. Depending on the vibe in the room I will add one quick, interesting, and nonoffensive thing about my personal life at the end. Basically recapping a cover letter but in a personable way because my writing is dry
I grew up in a place and went to school somewhere. My hobbies include several things that demonstrate commitment and ambition. My values exactly match those of this company. My biggest dream in life is to work hard to make your shareholders lots of money.
I work in a job where I have to introduce myself quite a lot. For a longer introduction like you would in an interview, I do the following:
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General statement about my career, one liner
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the professional topics I’m most interested, 3 or 4 bullet points
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a brief walk through my resume: what I studied (one liner) and where I worked, no longer than 1 minute total
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what am I doing currently, responsibilities, likes and dislikes, no more than a minute, they’ll ask you more about it later
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some personal details: family, kids, hobbies, favorite {teams, sports, countries, movies, whatever} keep it to 20-30 seconds
Total under 3 minutes
For a shorter one, like in a 1h zoom call:
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name, position (and description of the position if unusual), tenure.
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any relationship to the people in the call (I’m a customer of yours, my first car was from you, I would love to buy gizmo some day, etc)
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background info: previous jobs or studies if relevant (oh, i used to work in industry in college, etc)
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one hobby if relevant, or if it is in your background (movies, books, sports, photography, whatever)
Total 15 to 30 seconds.
I’d recommend looking on YouTube, “Life After Layoff” has some good interview advice. There’s many more, but that’s the one I remember right now.
Generally, the response should be related to you’re “professional life”, not your private one. They don’t care that you have 6 brothers and sisters and like to hike - your looking for a job, not a date. If your job happened to be for a national park baby sitting children, then your personal life just became much more relevant.
This question can be used to naturally lead into the “where do you see your self in 5 years” question, by talking about some of your career goals (if relevenat). Let’s say your goal is to be a park ranger, and the job your appling is to go around the park cleaning up - that’s a reasonable jump. If your planning to leave the job after a bit, don’t tell them anything to make it obvious.
If you can bring relevant past expirances of things you did (not just job title) into the conversation that’s good. Maybe you used to work at the local park keeping it clean from the local teens, advocated for trashbins to be installed and you want to continue taking care of nature on a larger scale.
Obviously those examples are completely made up, but including expirances to your responces can make a huge difference.
