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Interviews make you nervous and you are sure that the question Tell me about yourself will be the first question you will be asked. But you still don’t know the answer. Don’t worry because once you finish reading you will know exactly:
All these questions will be answered for sure and you will know their answer once you read it till the end.
You will know that “Tell me about yourself” isn’t the problem, isn’t a dreaded question.
Yeah, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking if this isn’t a question, isn’t a problem what it is, I want you to know that, it is an opportunity.
It is an opportunity that helps in making your first impression on the interviewer.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
– Carl Gustav Jung
These are the things which you can mug up and say. Tell something about yourselves, yeah I know, but what?
Now the most important point is how to go further so that the interviewer remains interested in your story, in your answer.
Start from your past, cover the challenges you faced in your life and end up with the present, telling him why you choose the current field. Your story must be motivating, and the hero of your motivating story is you.
While telling your story the most important point remember are:
When you are answering the question, tell me about yourself, you should only say what applies to you.
The interviewer is asking the question, tell me about yourself, to you for a reason. The most important of all the reasons is the reason how you are good for this job, why should you be hired?
Hence, while telling your story you should focus on including the parts which will help you in this job and makes you a perfect candidate for this job.
So, I think now you are getting why I asked you to think about how your job and life relate to each other.
Here the catch is don’t mug up, just don’t. No one needs to mug up their life story. They just know it. It doesn’t only help your life story seem natural and motivating and authentic, but also conveys your communication skills.
Now that you are going to be a hero, it mustn’t look like that you are overpraising yourself. Because heroes don’t compliment themselves, their deeds do.
You may also like to read our blog on How to introduce yourself in English.
Two points worth mentioning when preparing for “tell me about yourself” best answer for fresh graduate or simply “tell me about yourself”:
The interviewer has an experience which you won’t be able to beat, he will know if you are lying. So, don’t.
E.g., if you say, “You are highly trainable.”
Then there must exist a supporting experience or incidence for the same.
When you are talking about skills, not personality traits only mention those which are relevant to the current job profile.
Most important advice: try not to tell each and everything, try to have suspense, put blanks and gaps in your story wherever you can. It will help you trigger communication instead of one-way speech.
The interviewer will be interested in filling up the gaps and so he will ask and when he does, you will have two advantages:
When he asks you something related to your skills you can show off your experience a little and even talk about the projects briefly which you have mentioned in the resume.
Here at this point, you are not only talking about the question “tell me something about yourself” but also other things too.
So you may be wondering, how to run your interview helps?
Mostly it is suggested that you should not take more than 2min to answer the question. But it depends on two factors:
Otherwise, try to round up the answer in 2 minutes.
There are two perfect ways to end it:
Myself Harsh Mehta, I’m 21 years old and I recently graduated from University X with a B.Tech in Computer Science(If you are not a fresher you might tell them about your last job profile). While there, I learned a lot of basic to advanced subjects like operating systems, data structures and algorithms, computer networks (say only about those subjects which you know, it is an opportunity for you, the interviewer might ask questions from these subjects) and more. (For non-freshers you can tell what all you have learned in your experience) I was also part of the student council (you can say different leadership posts you have had or you have volunteered for some events or any sports or other activities you do and your roles. This again shows your ability to lead and teamwork)and maintained a CGPA of 7.6(For non fresher your work performance).
I’ve tried my best to be a better version of myself during the whole of my education and now I’m ready to apply my knowledge and experience into practice. (You can tell some strong personality traits and don’t forget to back them up with incidences and experiences. This is an important part of the question tell about yourself)
While I don’t have much real-life work experience but I have done some internships and made some projects (Here you can talk about your projects and internships in brief and leave some gaps and suspense.), I’ve had a lot of exposure to the business environment. A lot of my courses involved working with real companies, professors and my aluminise to solve real problems.
(For the last point a non-fresher can always talk about their real-life work experiences, internships and projects.)
(In last you can simply say why you are a good fit or tell them why you would like to join their company, what makes it different. Whatever way you close just back it up with some reasoning, logic.)
