Transcript for: Nailing the "Tell Me About Yourself" Question
Most people realize that a good answer to the tell me about yourself question sets the tone for the
rest of the interview. What some people miss
is that a great answer will help you influence what
the interviewer will ask next. In this video, I skip
all the common advice you might find in other tutorials and dive right into number one, how to structure a strong answer using the present, past
and future answer format. Number two, how to use
the highlight method to influence the interviewer. And number three, leave
you with an answer I'd give if I were interviewing right now. Although there is no
one-size-fits all answer to the tell me about
yourself interview question, there is a strong answer structure that is universally applicable. So while I do provide a
sample answer at the end, the main takeaway of this video should be the methods I use and how you can apply the same structure for your own use cases. Number one, using the present, past and future answer structure. Interviewers want to know
in order of importance, who you are right now, how you got to be there,
and what value you can bring to the role you're interviewing for. Present, past and future. Starting with the present, this is a snapshot of yourself in your current professional capacity. It should be kept within one minute and include the following. What you do in your current role, the success metrics you
are measured against, and a recent achievement you
are particularly proud of. If you're working professional, the present portion might
look something like this. I'm currently a management
consulting with Ernst and Young focus on Finance Shared
Service Center projects. My primary contributions
to the team are number one, organizing training
workshops for our clients adopting the new SAP system. And number two, putting
together pitch decks through market research for future business
development opportunities. A recent one I'd like to
share is when I use data from a free trial of eMarketer
to put together a deck on B2B marketing trends in
China, which ended up helping my senior manager close a $500,000 deal. By stating your current
role right off the bat, you show the interviewer
that first and foremost, you are a professional. This will also help you stay away from going off topic into
something too personal and therefore irrelevant. The town you grew up in, the
musical you're a part of. Then mentioning your own success metrics shows that you are results oriented. You know exactly what
your goals are on the job. It also shows you're confident
in your capabilities, because why else would you bring it up? Finally, the impactful achievement
that you briefly touch on keeps the interviewer
engaged with your story and plants follow up
questions in their minds. Wow, which eMarketing report was this? Why was the client sold on
the B2B marketing trends? And we'll talk about
this concept of influence a bit more later on. Although the example I gave just now was for working professional, if you're a current student, you can use the exact same structure. Simply start off by saying
what field of study you're in, then dive immediately into
recent class projects, internships, and leadership experiences. Don't worry about the
impressiveness level of your story, but rather the qualities
you're conveying about yourself as you tell it. If you found this first tip helpful, drop a like and comment down below to help me with the YouTube
algorithm as they say. Now on to the past portion of your answer. This is where you really get to show off and highlight key strengths or takeaways you want the interviewer to remember. This part should be
another minute maximum. Coming up with stories that
make you look good is easy. Keeping them concise, relevant
and under one minute is hard. So here's what we wanna do. First identify two to three attributes you feel the role is looking for. If it's sales, this
would be communication, stakeholder management. If it's accounting, this
might be attention to detail, strong analytical skills. Then scroll through your
mental Rolodex of experiences, projects, internships, to
figure out which one's best suit the attributes that they're looking for. Finally, and this might
be the hardest step, select one key moment
within each experience to serve as the highlight
of that experience. If you're a student interviewing
for a marketing position, your past portion might
look something like this. As the events coordinator
for our business fraternity, I'm responsible for planning, executing and tracking our weekly workshops. Since this requires a lot of
promotional marketing materials such as fiscal flyers
and email newsletters, I took the initiative
to try free online tools such as Canva and MailChimp
to better engage our members. After other student bodies noticed our new marketing materials, they actually came asking for help. And so I conducted a small group training for 30 other event
coordinators as a result. The training received a
satisfaction score of 98%. Some of you might be thinking right now, well, Jeff, her experience
is related to marketing. So that was an easy answer. I'm applying to a role I
don't have much experience in. Okay, imagine the same candidate were applying for an accounting position. In that case, the same event coordinator should focus on how she managed the budget for the entire year and how she kept track of
her fraternity's expenses. As you can see, the same experience can be and should be applicable for the different attributes
you wanna highlight. Finally, the future portion, this is just a quick 30-second wrap up where you reinforce the reasons why you're such a good fit for the role. The objective here is that
the interviewer imagine ever so slightly, how it makes such good sense
for you to be on their team. Following the previous example, let's just say that our event coordinator is applying for the accounting position. Her future portion might
look something like this. As someone who has been managing
our fraternity's finances for the past year, I'm glad to have been
able to apply the concepts that I learned in my accounting classes in real life situations. This has further reinforced my interest in pursuing accounting
as a full time career. My experiences combined by
international background make me a strong asset to the Financial Advisory
Services team at Ernst and Young. By the way, I have a Facebook group where I share weekly tips, consider joining if you haven't already, I'll link it down below. Number two, the highlight method. In a nutshell, the highlight method is where you take a small
part of a larger story that you have already prepared for and only include that part in the tell me about yourself
answer as a highlight. This helps you keep your answer concise while mentioning something impressive. If done right, the
highlight that you mentioned should trigger the interviewer
to ask follow up questions that lead to your larger story. If you've been paying
attention up to this point, you've probably already noticed that we've been sprinkling in highlights throughout the present past
and future answer structure. For example, in the present
portion to US$ 500,000 deal that you helped close is the highlight and you should have the
rest of the story prepared using the star format. All right, putting off that together. Here's a sample answer I'd give if I were interviewing right now. So Jeff, could you tell
me a bit by yourself? Sure, I'm currently a product marketer here at Google covering
the Greater China region. I mainly work on App campaigns, a Google product aimed at app developers. Specifically, I have two
objectives, number one, to reach as many new-to-Google
app developers as possible. And number two, increase product adoption among our existing app advertisers. My team and I achieve these goals through a mix of online
marketing campaigns, offline events and content marketing. For example, one of the
tentpole events I helped launch is called Start on Android China, where we leverage resources from our Play, Ads and AdMob teams to deliver a comprehensive
training bootcamp for Greater China App Developers. The goal is to address their pain points at each stage of their app export journey. A notable achievement was
when we decided to pivot from a three-day offline event format to a three-week online one. That actually resulted
in a five times increase in eligible signups before marketing, I was a key account
manager in the sales team covering around 30 B2C Chinese exporters. Since that's quite a few clients for just one person to cover. I actually created YouTube
videos to better engage my clients at scale. Funny story, you can still
actually find those videos on YouTube right now. This in addition to the support for cross functional team members helped me achieve revenue attainment without missing targets
for two years straight. Before joining Google, I
was a management consultant with Ernst and Young for two years. One year based out of New York City and another out of Shanghai, I worked on a variety of projects ranging from supply chain management to shared service centers. Due to the nature of these projects, I would often find myself as the only consultant physically on site, and therefore I was really able
to develop my communication and relationship management skills. Having spent the past six years in predominantly client-facing roles, I believe the communication
skills I've developed, combined with my international background, would make me a strong asset to your global business development team. (claps) And there you have
it a step by step guide on how to nail the tell me about yourself
interview question. I sincerely believe this is the most important interview question to get right. Not only because it sets the tone for the rest of the interview, but also if you do get it right, it gives you a huge confidence
boost right at the beginning. I hope this video helped. Subscribe if you haven't already, and comment down below if
you have any questions. See you on the next video
and in the meantime, (clicks) have a great one. (soothing music)