Tell Me About Yourself - An Excellent Answer to this Interview Question

- Hello, lovely students,

and welcome back to "English with Lucy."

In today's lesson,

I'm going to talk to you about different ways

to answer everybody's favourite part of an interview,

and that's sarcasm obviously.

I'm referring to the dreaded question,

"Tell me about yourself."

And you don't just find this question in interviews.

You might be asked to offer a self-introduction

in a meeting,

at a conference, in so many different situations.

Let's tackle it today.

Before I share all of my wisdom

on how to master this question,

I would like to remind you that as always,

there's a free PDF that goes with today's lesson,

and it contains everything

that we're going to discuss today,

lots more information

so you can really plan a perfect self-introduction,

plus a quiz for you to check your understanding.

If you'd like to download that,

all you have to do is click on the link

in the description box,

you enter your name and your email address.

You sign up to my mailing list

and the PDF will arrive directly in your inbox.

And then after that,

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Okay, let's get on with the lesson.

So "Tell me about yourself"

is one of the first questions or prompts

that you'll be asked in a job interview.

How you answer this question is really important

because what comes out of your mouth

is going to be the first impression

that the interviewer has of you,

and first impressions are extremely difficult to change.

Unfortunately, this question is a tough one to answer.

Go ahead, give it a think.

What would you say if I asked you to tell me about yourself?

So does the interviewer want to hear about your childhood

and what it was like to grow up with three brothers,

seven dogs, and an obsession with Britney Spears?

Or do they want a very detailed,

point by point rundown of your CV?

Which one did you go for?

Well, in all honesty, neither of these is a good approach.

So what do you say? Well, don't worry.

I'm going to tell you exactly how to answer this question

and I'll also highlight some phrases you can use

to really sell yourself.

First things first.

The most important thing to focus on is work,

not your personal life,

if you're answering this question

in a professional environment.

I know it might be tempting

to try to impress the interviewer

with an extravagant story about your life,

but hold onto those fascinating anecdotes

till after you have the job.

What you should do is give the interviewer a brief overview

of your employment experience

and talk about the roles you've done in the past

that relate to the job you're applying for.

And the key word here is brief. Just hit the highlights.

Treat it as a synopsis

or the blurb at the back of the storybook of your life.

You want to get the interviewer interested,

but you're not going to reveal the full story just yet.

If most of your work experience is in jobs similar

to the one that you're applying for,

start at the beginning.

Tell them your job title, the company you worked for,

and what you did there.

Let's imagine you work in HR, human resources.

You could say,

"My first job in the field

was as an HR assistant with GoWork,

a large company in Manchester.

My main duties were to support the managers with recruitment

and assist with monitoring staff engagement.

After two years,

I was promoted to HR manager with the same company.

I led a team of three in that role and I was responsible

for ensuring we hit our recruitment targets."

You can continue talking about your positions

until you reach your most recent one.

Now, let's imagine that you're applying

for a role of a senior teacher.

In this case,

you've only worked as a teacher for two years

and you had a different career before that.

You should start with the most relevant position.

"For the past two years,

I've been teaching business studies

at the local high school.

During that time,

I've taken ownership of the two most senior classes

and their exam preparation.

I was drawn to teaching

because I've always loved working with young people,

and I have a great rapport with them,

but that was a career change for me.

I began my career in marketing

and I worked my way up to senior marketing director

over the span of 10 years.

I feel that I have excelled

in my role as a business studies teacher

thanks to my real world experience in marketing

combined with my passion for teaching."

Remember, if you're a new graduate

and you're looking for your first real job,

you don't need to talk about your paid work.

Reflect on your journey through school,

university, part-time jobs, and even volunteer work.

Show off the gems that showcase your awesomeness.

Additionally, for each job or experience you mentioned,

you should talk about one major achievement

that you had there.

Focus on achievements that are relevant

to the role you're applying for and be specific if you can.

Can you see a theme here? Make it relevant.

You could talk about your hard skills or hard achievements,

and these are things

like learning a new programming language

or knowing how to operate a forklift,

but you can also talk about your soft skills

and soft achievements,

and these things are harder to measure,

but might involve using your communication skills

or solving a problem.

Let's look at some examples.

"One of my major accomplishments

was implementing a new accounting system

that saved the company approximately 70 hours a month."

Or, "Something that I'm most proud of

is that I was able to learn to use a new software programme,

and then teach my team to use it too."

Or even, "My greatest achievement in the past year

was beating the sales target by 14%

despite the difficult economic situation."

Okay, to finish off your answer,

you should talk about the job you're applying for

and how your skills or experience relate to it.

Here's that relevance again.

This is your opportunity

to really knock the socks off your potential employer

by showing them exactly why you are the only person

for the role they're trying to fill.

Here are two examples.

"The job post said that you're looking for someone

with strong sales skills.

My past achievements in not only meeting,

but exceeding sales targets

mean that I'm sure I would be a valuable asset

to the company.

I did some research on the company

before coming to the interview,

and I know that you value dynamic employees

who make decisions quickly.

I've had a lot of experience with that

as I've worked in a fast-moving tech startup."

Now, let's look at a full answer to this question.

This person, me, is doing a job interview

for the role of office manager,

and the interviewer has just said,

"Tell me about yourself."

Here's my answer.

"I've been working as an administrative assistant

for two and a half years.

My first job in the field was with Dorfshire Housing,

and my main responsibilities

were organising and updating housing records

for the local area.

One of my greatest accomplishments

was implementing an Excel model

to automate updates to the database.

This saved a lot of time each month.

After a year, I moved to Barksdale Housing,

a private company where I've been working

as a senior administrative assistant.

I oversee the records management there

and I look after a team of two.

I'm proud of the development

of my leadership skills during that time,

and I'm thankful for the support

of my current employer who helped with this.

I understand from the job post that you need someone

who could update your existing records management

and help lead a team of four through the changes.

I'm sure that with my experience and creativity

I will be able to make positive changes for you."

What do you think?

Personally, I would give myself a job. Wouldn't you?

Okay. Now I have a homework task for you.

Firstly, I want you to think of your dream job position.

Then I want you to follow the structure I've just taught you

and answer the "Tell me about yourself" question.

It can be realistic or it can be a version of yourself

in the future that you would like to one day become.

Write it in the comment section.

I would love to take a look.

Downloading the PDF will really help you with that task

and with practising for future interviews.

Just click on the link in the description box

to download that.

Right. That's it for this lesson.

I hope you feel more confident

about that dreaded "Tell me about yourself"

interview question in English now.

Don't forget,

if you would really like to learn English with me,

I have launched my B1, B2,

and C1 three-month English programmes.

And I'm very biassed, but they are awesome.

If you would like to check them out

and see if they're the right fit for you,

visit englishwithlucy.com.

I will see you soon for another lesson. Bye.

(calm music)