Tell me about yourself Guidelines

"Tell me about yourself": The first question is almost always some variation of this. It is intended
to give you a chance to introduce yourself and get the conversation going.

Most people just answer this by giving a chronological progression of their career starting from
where they are from, where they went to college, where they worked and then business school.
However, the fact is that the interviewer already has all of this information right in front of them in
your CV. So, this makes it repetitive and boring, therefore, do NOT do this.

Use this opportunity to talk about the best and most important attributes about yourself supported
by evidence and capture the interest of the interviewer. This is when you should talk about your best
achievements and bring out what’s unique about you. Talk about the following:

 Achievements/accomplishments – best is to quantify wherever possible, for example:

o Went to a college ranked in the top 5 out of 100 colleges in the University
o Increased sales by 40%
o Reduced costs by 10%
o Reduced software defects by 20%
o Reduced processing time by 10%

 Positive qualities/strengths, always with examples from your past to substantiate it, for example:
o Leadership qualities – led a team of 5 people / captain of college cricket team
o Initiative – Volunteered to take on a role when someone left the organization
o Problem solving – Resolved a defect in the software that was preventing acceptance sign
off by the customer
o Team player – Took on different roles depending on the need of the organization
o Wherever possible, use achievements/accomplishments as examples to substantiate your
positive qualities/strengths.

A possible template to use to answer this is:

a) I am <xxxxx (material from CV profile summary)>, where xxxxx should be your most relevant
qualification to this interview. If you are a fresher, xxxxx could be “mechanical engineer” or “CS
engineer”. If you have worked in IT and are in an interview where this is relevant, xxxx could be
“IT professional”. If you had worked in operations and this role is an operations role, xxxx could be
“operations professional”. If there is nothing relevant from your past, you can directly link it to the
profile you are interviewing for making xxxxx be “aspiring marketing professional” for marketing
interviews, “aspiring consultant” for consulting interviews, etc. The idea is to make it relevant.

b) The talk about 3 or 4 qualities / attributes about yourself that are your biggest strengths followed
by an instance/example that substantiates it. In the example, you can bring out the companies you
worked at or the college you went to. For example, if you say your strength is being a highly
analytical person, give an example from your prior work where your analysis made a difference. Do
not give detailed backgrounds and scenarios. Keep it crisp and follow the pattern indicated further
below for any example.
c) After the 3-4 qualities, you can you can conclude this answer with the reason for your interest in
this company or profile saying “I am here because I wish to build a career in business development /
digital marketing / product management / analytics and believe that this position at <yyyyy
company> would be a great starting point for me”, where yyyyy is the company you are
interviewing for.

In a nutshell, the entire answer should not be more than 2 minutes. – this is an opportunity to sell
yourself. It should be customized to what the buyer wants, that is the needs of the company in the
job you are interviewing for. Carefully study the Job Description (JD) and company details to figure
this out. Talk to people already working in the company to understand better what the job would
entail over and above what is specified in the JD.

And remember, DO NOT talk about the following:

 Your name
 Hometown
 Family background
 Chronological summary of your CV