people struggle with the most ass interview question Tell me about yourself keep watching and we'll teach you how to answer this question so they want to hire you on the spot you're hired this question is going to be asked in any job you apply to why because the first step usually in whatever job application is the recruiter screen and they're going to ask you this question as one of the first questions to assess whether your past experiences match with the job description because this is where they filter out people that are not a good fit
so a lot of people ask me well do I share a play-by-play of my professional career from when I started in college to my first job to my second job my third job my 10th job do I tell them about my hobbies do I tell them about my life story this might be hard to hear I'm going to let you in on secret because I like you but it's not really about you three things I'm going to cover in this video first the secret to nailing the tell me about yourself question secondly I'm going to
share a framework that's going to be a template like fill in the blanks to make it easy for you and third we're going to talk through some examples so let's dive in first the secret to nailing this question you gotta reframe how you think about this question so when they say tell me about yourself you should realize what they're really asking is tell me about yourself so I can figure out if you're a good fit for this role and our company they're basically going to compare you next to what they're hiring for so when you're
talking to them about your life in their back of their mind they're thinking okay I I know what I want and I'm constantly looking to see what you have to offer and whether it matches with what they want so for the tell me yourself question most career gurus forget the first step in this Quest question you want to go figure out what the heck they're looking for whether it's through the job description or asking the recruiter directly let me share my hack how I do this to make sure I personalize my answer to not just
the company but each individual that's interviewed me when I get into an interview a couple minutes in I would say something like I've read the job description front and back but I'd be curious what your perspective is and what this role is looking for and their response helps me in the back of my mind to then personalize my response around what they say that they want so again it's not totally about you but you relative to the what the company is looking for and hence your tell me about your self-response it should be a two
to three minute teaser that Peaks the interviewer's Curiosity to then want to Deep dive with you and ask you other questions about your experience you should also briefly comb through your resume a because don't assume that the interviewer coming in has read your resume most times they're not they don't because they're busy going into meetings and they probably didn't even know they had an interview today until five minutes ago but do not go through your entire resume a lot of career gurus will tell you start from your earliest experience and how that maps to your
current experience no especially if you've had more than three jobs hiring managers don't want to play-by-play of your experience from when you were eight and I started coding and then when I went to college I studied computer science then my first job was a software engineer which led me to my second job and then I hated my third job so it took me to my fourth job no so if that's not what they want to hear then let's go through what they do want to hear so let's jump into the framework so the first step
in the framework is the overview and here you want to cover the role that you're currently in and the length of time you've been in that role for example starting off with I've been a product manager for five years so this is simple right I told you this was going to be a fill in the blank here are some caveats if you're interviewing for a role and you haven't been in that role for too long you might skip calling out how many years you've been that role and I'll tell you why a little bit later
or if your current role isn't in the same function as the role that you're applying to you might not even mention the role that you're currently in so why did I say those two things because sometimes if you have little years of experience or you're not in the role that you're interviewing for some interviewers might be biased in the back of their mind some unconscious bias to think like oh this person's like super junior or this person is applying for the wrong role especially if they're interviewing people that already have that role and hence you
want them to assess you fairly based on the work that you've done and not the title or how many years you've been in there so this isn't necessarily lying or leaving out information they can find all of that on your resume the second part of the overview you want to talk about the companies you've worked at and the domains if you want to start off with your most current employer not your first employer why because where you're working at now is probably more relevant to the job than where you were working five years ago if
your company name is easily recognizable you want to mention alongside the domain so for example I worked at Google building products for AI and machine learning so there Google's the company and the domain is AI and machine learning so yeah I mentioned I was gonna explain what domain means you can talk about the industry like Retail Finance fashion or you can talk about topics and spaces like I mentioned AI machine learning we can talk about Hardware those are to clue in the interview we're on the domains that you've worked in and it really helps because
sometimes times they might be willing to hire you even if you haven't done that specific role but you have the domain expertise for example a lot of investment banking people go into working at Tech startups and they make the leap into Tech by first joining a fintech company because they understand Finance so what do you do if your company's name isn't super recognizable then you might skip the company name altogether and just mention the domains for example I worked at a company focused on retail and finance as a software engineer and why do we omit
the name here because of the name of the company isn't recognizable then you saying it isn't going to add much value versus if you just mentioned the domain where the interviewer is like ah okay interesting you're applying for a fintech company you're in finance makes sense so let me give you an example encompassing of all the things that we just talked about from the framework so I've been a product manager for five years now and I'm currently at Google building products for AI and machine learning prior to Google I worked at a startup focused on
retail and then prior to that I was at Chase Bank working in finance and Investment Banking you see here I mentioned the retail startup without mentioning the name because it's not easily recognizable now version two this is if you've worked at companies where the name isn't the most well known and hence you're mostly using the domain and this is also the case if you haven't been in the role that you're applying for for too long I'm currently developing Ai and machine learning products and tools for developers before I worked at a startup focused on retail
and prior to that I worked at a large Bank on investment banking why don't we put this into practice and I'd love for you to take the template that I just showed you and comment below and let's kick off that one to two sentence to get a head start on the tell me about yourself question beyond the overview you want to cover core skills and what you did on the job and the impact that you've had and your first Duty here is to show them that you've done what they're hiring for so maybe talk about
three to five skills that they're hiring for for example if the company is hiring for a product manager then you'll want to talk about all the times that you've done strategy work or launching a product or talking to customers and again you want to start with your most current employer not your first because your most current employer you're probably doing work there that is most applicable to what they're hiring for and here you don't want to use the same three to five skills for every employer that you talk about but instead if you're going to
mention a second employer talk about core skills there that wasn't mentioned for the first employer so that they end up being complementary rather than repetitive other reasons where you might mention another company is if there's something that you were especially proud of that you accomplished maybe at a company you helped drive a 10 million dollar Revenue increase that's definitely something you want to mention next you want to mention the scope of what you worked on and here it's to reflect complexity and the difficulty of the challenges that you had for example you might say something
like let a 50 people team with a 500 million dollar budget and lastly you'll want to talk about the impact that you had at these companies either quantitative or qualitative and this is a show that you've delivered sizable impact companies want to hire people who are driving and impacting business outcomes not just doing the job for example I led the strategy and execution for 50-person organization where we built a new product line that contributed 50 million dollars in annual recurring Revenue so do you see in this last example where we highlighted the core skill which
is strategy and execution we talked about the scope which is the 50 people team and then we talked about the impact which is creating a new product line and the 50 million dollar ARR annual recurring Revenue by the way in a future video I'm thinking about covering other commonly asked questions maybe like tell me about a weakness why don't you comment below and let me know what are some common interview questions that you'd like me to cover in more depth and make sure to subscribe so you don't miss when that video hits and the third
part of what you want to cover and probably one of the most important parts and relates to the message we shared at the start of the video is why are you a good fit and because this action is so important I might actually advise that you address it explicitly and say something like well because this role is looking for strategy work I think I'm a good fit based on my past experience working in management consulting where I've created strategy for the Fortune 100 companies or you might say this role is a good fit because I'm
extremely passionate about creating strategy for large companies if you think those two are a bit braggadocious or come off a bit too arrogant you might want to go with something a bit more implicit you can try the method of mentioning keywords in the core skills section or this last section for example if a company is looking for people who can work in a fast-paced environment then at the end you might say something like at these companies that I just mentioned I've worked in very fast paced environments with really tight guidelines and we're able to deliver
the results and more or you might say something like well I'm very interested in this role because there's a fast-paced culture which I've shown to have thrived in before now I'm going to mention this last section which is totally optional but here I would say be personable after all we're all human beings where we do things that we enjoy outside of our work and a lot of care gurus tell you to avoid this section but I would say this section is so crucial to connecting with the interviewer and being memorable for example you can share
a fun fact that makes it easy for them to remember you out of all the people they've interviewed for example my go-to at the end of the interview to show that I love traveling is telling interviewers oh I've gone to 95 countries or you can talk about Hobbies of yours that are easily relatable for example traveling cooking Sports these are things that are going to invite the interviewer in to maybe ask you a question or also let you know that they also are obsessed with badminton and that's actually for real if any of you guys
are obsessed with badminton let me know because I play a whole heck of a lot of Batman and see how you're gonna remember this fun fact about me so this can sound on something like outside of work you can find me playing badminton or beyond my day job I love hiking and I've even climbed Mount Everest and I mentioned this section is optional but it is such a great way to connect with the interviewer on a human level so a couple things that I want you to remember first is be intentional basically I mentioned this
question is not necessarily about you but you relative to what they're looking for so if you want to be strategic in answering this question right there's definitely a right way to answer though there's no right answer you want to convey what fits what the hiring manager is looking for of course that's also aligned with what you care about because you don't want to be inauthentic for example if someone is hiring for a cryptocurrency product you want to talk up your Finance experience and not so much need to mention your retail experience and the second thing
I want you to remember is the be structured in your response so again if to tell me about yourself question isn't supposed to be you telling me your life story or a cramble but start from the 100 000 foot level and here we mentioned talking about how many years you've been in the role the companies you've been in and then go down to the 10 000 feet level which is talking about the core skills that you've done and why you're a good fit for this role based on your experience think of it as an onion
your peeling layer by layer and also in your response make sure to pause so that it doesn't come off like a soliloquy oh I also forgot to mention how long each of these sections should take so in the overview section should be no more than around two sentences so that's about 30 seconds in the meteor section where you're covering your core skills that can be up to a minute or a minute-ish and then the section on wire good fit should be anywhere from 30 seconds to 45 seconds which is about one to two sentences and
then the last section of be personable should be maybe 15 seconds it's a one sentence thing mention so again your response should be no more than two to three minutes realize this is just the first question in the interview they're most likely going to ask you other questions like tell me about a time you dealt with a conflict or tell me about a time you were given negative feedback so take a look at this video where I actually share a structure for you to answer behavioral questions just like that I will see you guys in
the next video
