afternoon everybody welcome back to the career coaching series i'm alex your career coach and today we are talking about tell me about yourself a wildly exciting topic but today we are going to be digging in a little bit further into the formula of how to deliver this information in an incredible way if you recall we do have another series that's based on tell me about yourself so please check that out so you can hear some of the other golden tidbits around this topic it is something that is incredibly important and the first thing that interviewers will ask you so tune in and i'm going to tell you a little bit more about who we are and why you should be listening today who are we uvaro is your career success company we specialize in the technology industry and we are a training and education spot for people to be able to elevate their careers learn some new information some new skills and to have one-on-one coaching and practice throughout the programs and throughout the membership here at uvaro we do have a paid residency program as well if you'd like to try out these new skills and work directly with some of our employer partners who are absolutely out of this world outstanding we have career services this is again what i head up specifically so please tune in to these career coaching workshops and sessions so you'll be able to understand a little bit more about what it is that we do and why we do it and how to predict your outcome and your success we do offer lifetime support so if you're interested please tune into our website take a look at the information there and reach out directly to some of our sales team to understand how you can elevate yourself and dive in a little bit further into our network what are we covering today as we just talked about tell me about yourself the most dreaded question in an interview how is it that the most dreaded question is the one that is asked first and it's usually the most informal but it carries an incredible amount of weight so we're going to be focusing on how to answer this question with conviction to be able to deliver something that then sounds confident even if you're nervous and even if you have no idea what you're doing because let's be honest who actually knows what we're doing i certainly don't [Laughter] so again we're going to work on how to deliver your answer how to add some personality and zh spice pizzazz whatever you like to call it and how to specifically focus on the topic at hand that you choose and what exactly it is that you should leave out uh that relates to the question okay so without further ado let's dig in i'm gonna stop sharing my screen now i'm nice and big so everybody can tune in snuggle up grab some snacks and let's let's let's give her now the formula that i want everybody to write down on how to create something that you're delivering super well with a lot of focus and a lot of personality are three words okay so everybody grab one of these fancy pens grab your notebook and please write it down i'll wait for two seconds the most important thing that you need to recognize realize and genuinely understand about how to craft this answer is to become short concise and engaging three words short concise engaging when you are short it adds to the delivery of your answer when you are concise it is helping build that focus and come into your own um and really be able to deliver an award-winning topic and then your engaging side is going to be you your personality if you recall we have dug into how to understand and how to develop your why right this really coincides with being able to actually articulate that tell me about yourself answer now if we take it back and we start with short okay let's all be short i'm only 5'3 so i actually identify as short but when you are short i want you to picture this somebody is answering the question tell me about yourself let's say you meet a new friend and you're like oh bronte tell me about yourself then all of a sudden bronte is talking for six seven minutes with no breaks literally just rambling on and on sorry bronte if you're watching this right now but if she is rambling and talking for six seven minutes and starting with you know well this is who i am this is what i did with my career this is where i well this is where i went to school this is what i did with my career it gets exhausting okay and so this is where the word short really comes into play i want you to remember that humans have an incredibly short attention span it is maybe eight seconds eight seconds honestly that is nothing i think a goldfish actually has more memory or attention span okay so eight seconds is what you've got to be able to enrapture and engage your audience right from the beginning so when you answer a question like tell me about yourself this is what and where the hook comes in okay so what people typically do well they don't typically do what you should do is think about starting with a question what this does is it condenses the beginning of your answer asks your audience member or your listener to really engage in the first four seconds of what it is that you're offering so if i was answering this question i have a background in fly fishing and it really encompasses who i am not just what i do outside of work but how i came into career coaching and so naturally when somebody says alex tell me about yourself i say uh yeah that's a it's a big question you know let me ask you when was the last time you've ever gone fishing or have you ever gone fishing or when was the last time you've ever stepped in the middle of a roaring river what that does is it gets your audience members to go oh i don't know i do like fishing or i've never been fishing or i haven't really been in the middle of a river and so it gets them opting in and leaning in to listen of where you're going with that question and so dust begins the formula of being short because you are engaging your audience member you're asking them a question you're making sure that they can peer into that window and they are questioning or answering the question that you are offering at that point you've got their attention and so then i would move forward and say well that's what i do i spend the majority of my time outside of work standing in the middle of a river teaching people how to fly fish have you ever fly fished before you haven't uh i'd be happy to take you out or to teach you some things if you ever want to go now let me tell you this picture you're standing in the middle of a roaring river with somebody beside you who is unable to walk well in the river but they are desperately want to catch that fish i spend my days being able to point them to something even if they don't catch something but being able to pull out something whether it's more confidence or conviction or just fun from the time that we spend together that's why i'm also a career coach it's the same thing i'd love to tell you a little bit more about that you have a couple more seconds and but you see what that does that was incredibly short condensed but i was able to ask them a question have them answer have them picture being in the middle of a river in the middle of something with somebody so they're tuning in and they're thinking wow that's a little wild right and then i'm giving them that lesson at the end saying this is actually how i came to become a career coach because they're so intertwined then i'm asking permission for them to go ahead and say yes please tell me more about that so throughout that entire short vision in the beginning of that tell me about yourself they're enraptured they're looking and they're giving you permission to keep going this is what's called setting the stage and what we're going to be focusing on on other series but for now i wanted to paint that compelling picture to you folks to understand why being short in your delivery is so important it's so important so you don't get the glassy eye if you start seeing glassy eyes from people that you are talking to that means you are not being short enough okay amazing now moving on to being concise there's recovered short we're now into concise which helps with the focus of your delivery okay so we need to be as concise as possible which means we have to know our why if you talk about um well i went to school and then i did this for my career but i wasn't really sure what i wanted to do so i went back and forth and then you zip to another subject or you talk about somebody that you've met that helped with that but it's not concise to the story that you're beginning to tell when we're in the short column it's going to be really difficult for people to follow through with what it is that you're saying okay and so we want to be concise we want to pick a topic about ourselves that people are going to be able to follow in a short concise and engaging way okay so the concise word is incredibly important to ensure you've got clarity and focus in the story you're about to tell we are massive personalities we don't just have one thing that we could talk about when somebody asks us tell me about yourself we've got our personal life we've got our career we've got the things that we love we have things that we don't love we've got things that we just love to do and very specific hobbies right i'm a photographer i'm a fly fishing guide i'm on a television show for fly fishing i like to be outside 24 7. i have an australian shepherd all of these things can amount to a subject i talk about when somebody asks me to tell me about yourself okay we can't tell our entire life story because it's not concise so we pick one topic that we want to run through now the best course of action when we want to be concise and we're working with that formula is to be able to write out every topic that we could think about and we could talk about when somebody asks you that question somebody might say alex but i how do i just cover everything like how do i just say you know i this is who i am you can but remember there are multiple facets of who you are so you have to pick one that you can run with and explain accordingly to somebody who is asking that only has a small window to view who you are once they get to know you and they see you multiple times and you chat and chat and talk and spend time together then that small window is going to go so then you become more transparent to them topic after topic after topic will arise but don't feel like you have to deliver your entire life story when someone that you don't know asks tell me about yourself you pick one topic and that is your concise answer to be able to run with gorgeous i picked fly fishing next i think i might pick photography and i'm going to connect photography with what i've chosen to do with my profession and you want to tune back into the next or one of the next career workshops to figure out how you are able to make that connection when you're having a conversation with somebody okay that's concise now moving into engaging we want to be short concise and engaging this is the fun part everyone granted i think a lot of you might raise your hand please do if you can if this is the one that actually scares you the most remember when you are short and you're concise these are things that you can control right you can control the time at which you talk to somebody and you can control the topic that you choose to be very concise about but the engaging portion of it you certainly can control that but because it has to do with adding energy and personality into it it feels a little bit more intimidating because raise your hand if you've ever felt oh that i was just so myself there i'm so embarrassed i usually get a few people laughing when i say that you know sometimes i do something silly and i put a lot of energy and i'm like and then i go oh that was so embarrassing i was just so myself there it's like humans go and we take a mental check of how not to be and how to be in social situations so naturally adding that personality in that spice that engaging side of you is harder to do but i'm asking you to give yourself permission to be you when you are talking about yourself if you are a little bit monotone raise your hand if you're a little bit monotone right if you're a monotone how can we get you to work with your voice cadence and put some inflection in or smiling right when somebody is a little bit monotone but they go and talk like this and you know my life has been full of technology but it's something that i really love you see what happens there you add a smile in and it lights up everything around you that is a part of being engaging body language movement signals eye signals smiling everything can point into that engaging portion of it so please don't think to be engaging you have to be that you know alex parks i'm your career coach welcome here i'm so excited for you to join us today that takes years of practice and embarrassment to be able to do that okay and so i want you to think about how to be engaging based on your personality and your strengths what is your superpower maybe if your monotone you were really able to enrapture somebody with all of the facts that you are able to deliver or you're really good at questioning and inviting somebody in to the conversation or you're incredibly caring or you're dynamic you know with the conversations that you have i want you to take this piece of paper that you wrote be short concise and engaging on and i want you to start writing down all of the things that you do extremely well at when it comes to having conversations or having relationships with people okay the engaging portion is the one that we need to dig for we need to find out what this means for you for me it's energy i did not know this until people told me alex you have a lot of energy i have no idea how you do it i laughed because i'm relate or i what do i i identify as being extremely introverted but when it comes to having conversations with people and helping them be the best versions of themselves i go written and i light right up and i had no idea until i became a coach and i had to put myself in a position to do this and so when we talk about being engaging i'm just happy to tell you guys how wonderful you are and i had to write that down that's something that i love to do and so i'm asking you folks to do the same thing because it is imperative to really identify and find out how you can engage your audience okay your personality is the brightest part of you the brightest part even if you might think that you know you're not super fun or you're not very engaging you know or you don't do a lot of cool things 90 of the people that i talk to feel that way about themselves but i encourage you send me a note on linkedin and start the conversation start writing down hey alex these are some of the traits that i've identified how can i use this in the engaging or personality portion of my formula to answer tell me about yourself and we can walk through it together i would start filming yourself answering tell me about yourself and sending it to people for feedback this is the best way that you're going to be able to get an understanding of what your superpower is in terms of your personality and being engaging people will be able to tell you you should do more of that oh i love that part of your story remember everything comes back to you your story and what you are allowing an audience member to see so you want to be short concise and engaging which means you've got conviction in who you are what you're saying and what you're about to do so the final thing here you've got your formula written down but please do everything you can to write the word conviction down because if you believe in everything that you're saying and yourself and what you're about to do it is naturally going to come off as confident i don't want you to worry or ever say again oh i need to be more confident all you need and all you can control is you have that utter belief or that utter conviction in what you're about to do and it will tie everything together in that formula and you're going to be able to create something that people will want to hear more of okay and so the biggest question as we get to the q a portion here as i'm sharing my screen the biggest question with this that i get is alex what if people just don't care and i wanted to talk about this question because it was so meaningful it was asked in a way that was almost sad to hear what if they just don't care the thing about this i need you to remember if people are actively asking you tell me about yourself it's because they do care even just a little bit they're caring enough to ask and promise people don't have to ask you anything so when you're in an interview the tell me about yourself question is not just a placeholder before you begin that interview that actually is 80 of what it is that they want to see from you or want to hear from you how do you articulate yourself how excited are you about the opportunity but how you outside of work connect to what you're about to do i'm alex i'm a fly fishing guide i spend my days trying to allow people to get out of the office and into nature through fly fishing directly relates to being a career coach because both are a journey of finding something capturing it and falling in love with what they are or what you do and so it all interconnects and i really want people to come back or tune in to the workshop that's going to be centered around connection and finding your why so we can do this together and continue this series to make you the best versions of yourself particularly in an interview in tech when that's certainly what they want to know now thank you for joining love that series i want to tell you a little bit more about what's coming next so for more information on who we are and about our courses please check out uborrow.com course if you're more interested in some of the uh lessons that we teach or courses uh one of our sales individuals we'll get back to you and they're absolutely phenomenal so please ensure you ask lots of questions uh our next event step into tech two hour tech sales master class it is every wednesday from six to eight pm et please attend if you are curious at all about who it is that we are and what it is that we teach this is being taught by industry professionals that blow me away and they teach me things every day that i never thought i'd be able to learn even being a career coach outside of this so please tune in they are absolutely phenomenal we have office hours with uvaro which is super exciting wednesday may 25th at 12 p.m et it's going to be live on youtube and linkedin with sheila fung who is our head of instruction programming and delivery and with megan durnford who is absolutely phenomenal you really do not want to miss this session so please tune in and ask any questions that you might have about your career so they can answer them for you my next live tutorial will be coming up as a career coaching series on wednesday june 8th at 12 pm et please stay tuned for the topic i can't wait to see you again thank you so much for joining and if you have any questions please reach out to me on linkedin or type them in the comments and i will get back to you as soon as i can thank you so much everybody