Tell me something about yourself?

How hard can it be to talk about yourself? We do it on a daily basis without much thought to it.

However, recruitment managers are not looking for your whole life story, your third-grade achievements, or what you had for dinner last night. Instead, they are looking for a pitch.

This is usually the first question asked in an interview, so it acts as your introduction. Make sure your answer is relevant to the position you are applying for. What you should be aiming for here is to present yourself as the ideal candidate for the job.

A good rule of thumb is to structure your talking points as follows:

  • Briefly introduce yourself: What’s your name? How long have you been working as [profession]?
  • What do you love about your job?
  • What are your top 2-3 achievements that are relevant to the job you’re applying for?

Now, let’s go through some examples:
Sample Answer 1

Hey! So, my name is rohit and I’ve worked as a business analyst for 5+ years in Company X and Company Y.*

I have some background in data analysis, having studied Information Systems at [Made-Up] University.

Throughout my career, I’ve done some pretty impressive stuff (if I do say so myself, haha).

For example, at Company X, I led a project for migrating all operations data to a new data warehousing system to cut down on costs. The new solution was a much better fit for our business, which eventually led to savings of up to 600,000 annually.