Figuring out the best way to respond to “tell me about yourself”

“So, tell me about yourself?”

Real talk, I think we can all agree that we’ve come across this question time and time again in an interview. But don’t forget, we often get confronted with this question in real life like in the form of “so, what do you do?”. Parties, work events, dating, school drop off… It's all the same thing.

At the root of it, what they’re asking is: who are you, what are you like, what are you all about. And not long after they will have made up their mind of who they think you are and if they want to get to know you more.

The last thing we want is for your lack of clarity or communication to prevent you from showing all your glory. 

This is your elevator pitch. Your time to show off your greatness. So let’s get prepared so that you feel good with your response after you walk away!

We will explore below how you can clearly identify just who it is you are, how you can communicate that, and how you can tailor your response depending on the situation.

Step 1: Get clarity on who you are

Before you can tell someone else who you are… Do YOU know who you are? I know, this seems conventional but it’s very important to get clarity on your identity first and foremost.

I especially ask this to any of you parents as your identity does shift. And not just in the “I have a child” way. The phase of life when most people become parents often also comes with a lot of other life changes. For example, rapid career development, taking on more responsibilities at work and at home, and becoming someone with more financial responsibilities.

I believe that becoming a parent is a real coming of age experience so it’s important to take this into account and understand how much you’ve grown so that you can share this with the world.

When starting this exercise, remember to cut yourself some slack! It may feel overwhelming to answer “tell me about yourself”. That’s okay and very normal! That’s what I’m here for.

Here are some questions to get the wheels turning:

• What hats do you wear at home? (i.e. parent, caregiver, social butterfly)

• What hats do you wear in your community? (i.e. philanthropist, involved in arts/sports/politics, faith)

• What hats do you wear at work? (i.e. type of work, responsibilities, what do you bring to your organization and team culture)

• What hats are you working on being able to wear, in any of these areas? (i.e. do you hope to start/grow your family? Do you want to become more involved in your communities? Are you working to gain more responsibility at work?)

When we ask ourselves these questions and take time to reflect, it allows us to look past the “who we think we should be”, and actually celebrate who we are. I’m guessing you’re very multifaceted, and also someone who doesn’t always recognize or appreciate that about yourself. 

Now we move on and get a bit more focused. 

Step 2: Do the prep work

This is the fun part. And this is where you become really sleuthy and strategic. Now those of us who have not done any sort of prep work (like you’re doing right now by reading or listening to this), you can be caught off guard, which can lead to being a little too excited or rambly.

So what you’ll do is take all of the information you gathered about yourself in step one, and decide on how you will filter that based on the conversation you have coming up.

Some of the questions you can ask yourself are:

• What do you know about them in terms of what do they do? 

• How do you know this person?

• What is the outcome of the conversation? E.g. is it casual/social, an interview, a meeting with someone more senior at work

Two different examples…

Personal: you’re at a wedding

You’re in a conversation with a fellow guest at a friend’s wedding. You have one mutual acquaintance for sure, but that’s all you know about this person. When thinking about the outcome of the conversation, it’s generic and high level. There’s no expectation. So when you’re asked to share a bit about yourself, you paint a broad brush stroke across theh different facets of your life. You share a few vauge details about your person, work and maybe community life. What this does, is give the other person to latch onto a commonality or point of interest, thus allowing the conversation to keep flowing. 

Corporate: you’re an external CEO coming into a new company

Say you’re coming in as the new CEO at a company. Nobody knows you. Maybe they don’t trust you. You're giving your first big address at a town hall, and you know that the audience is sitting there wanting to know if you're up for the challenge. They also want to know if you're decently likable, and they want to know if you're somebody who has what it takes to make the employees' lives better. That is where the CEO should be focusing their time, translating any stories about their experience to how that will directly make them a great person in this new role, and how it will benefit the employee. Bottom lines are great, but they’re not interesting to the employees if they can’t see the direct benefit to them.

What you’re doing in these cases, is looking at the audience and determining what dials to turn up and down in the areas of your:

• Work life

• Personal life

• Community life

Preparing for “Tell me about yourself.” in interviews

The most important thing that you will prepare for an interview is going to be how you will answer “tell me about yourself”. 

First of all, it will make or break your first impression. Second, t's going to help or hinder your confidence for the rest of the conversation. And third, and most importantly, this is a section of the interview that you know will happen, so you can be the most prepared and really let you light shine.

Step 3: Tailor your response

This part is easy! You’ve nailed your response a few times by doing some prep work. Now you might be encountering a situation where you didn’t get the chance to prepare, how do you fast track the prep-work process.

First you come back to your percentages. So think of those three bucket areas I've been talking about, which is your personal world, your community world, and your work world. And really think about who is standing in front of you? What do they want to know about you, and then you quickly dial up and down those aspects of yourself. 

So if it's a personal holiday party, dial up the personal side of things, dial down, the work stuff. Because you’ve tapped into who you are as a person and you’re more clear about what hats you wear in life, you can take that mental shortcut and jump into your personal side, without getting thrown off course or getting rambly.

The second mental calculation you’ll do is consider how much time you have.

“Okay, I've got 30 seconds, what do I want to share?”

Take that shortcut by knowing what situation you are in and what is appropriate to share, and then size it up or down to the amount of time you have. For 30 seconds, you’re sharing one very quick fact about yourself!

Now go rock your confident self, and let your light shine in the world!

Hope you enjoy rocking your “tell me about yourself responses”! Connect with me on Instagram @andreabarrcoaching and let me know how it goes. I want to hear all your wins!