How to answer the most basic interview question – “Tell me about yourself.” for experienced professionals

As you already have some relevant work experience and would have faced some interviews in the past, you would know that this is like a mandatory interview question. You would also know by experience that if you go unprepared, you would either be at a loss of words or talk unimportant things, which don’t add up to your job interview’s points.

So, pay attention and read on for some useful preparation tips on this question.

Do’s:

• Focus on your role while preparing your answer relevant to the job and the desired career path which matches with this job.
• Prepare a script that has all the points you want to cover within the introduction and then practice it.
• Sound natural while practicing your script and be confident while answering.
• Always try to end your answer with some topic which you know inside out. Because, a lot of times, interviewers pick questions from where you left.

Don’ts:

• Don’t deep dive into personal life stories.
• Stay clear of any negative points that might give rise to doubts about you staying put in this job or weak performances in the past jobs.
• Don’t give a short and abrupt introduction with just your name, nativity and past company names.

Framing your script:

Because you are an experienced candidate, you are a prospective hire for a middle to senior role. So mention achievements and strengths from your past job that are relevant to this role. You don’t have to go deep until being asked and keep it short to fit just the introduction.

For example, you can mention the following.

• Number of years you have been with the industry.
• The opportunities your role offers which you enjoy.
• Any significant achievement that gave you a career boost in the past.
• Your overall positives when it comes to any job like - attention to detail, stringently meeting deadlines, quality of work (with respect to rework/defects depending on your industry), etc.

Conclude your reply with what you look forward to in the company with your new job role. This will help the interviewer to know about how your strong areas and experience match the current job opening and it will form a powerful introduction.

Below is just an example introduction.

“I’m XYZ and I’m from ABC. I’ve been into this industry for the past 5 years. My last project was about developing a unique app for the IJK client that had features like instant collaboration, showing the sales figures with just a tap on the app, see urgent messages, and the like. The customer was very happy with the product and he shared that this has helped IJK to increase their sales by 30%.

I’m looking forward to join a strong team where I can use all my app development knowledge, and automation techniques like Pardot that I’ve learned, to give more value to the customer.”

You can create and practice your own introduction following the above guidelines.