"Tell me about yourself."
Talking about yourself isn't hard - or is it?
If you want to have a captivating answer to the,
'tell me about yourself' interview question, stay tuned.
Hello and welcome back to my channel,
where I help you slay your career and cultivate the successful life you deserve.
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I release a new video every Tuesday. Talking about yourself isn't really hard.
Or is it? Strangely,
it seems to be when the 'tell me about yourself' interview question does come
up. I've interviewed hundreds of candidates,
and this is actually one of my favorite questions to ask. However,
I've seen it go south way too many times.
From giving completely irrelevant information,
to consuming the rest of the interview time in a boring AF monologue about
themselves, of still questionable relevancy.
There is a lot of wrong ways to answer this interview question.
And I do not want that to be you, my friend.
And that's why I developed the LOVE formula.
The love formula is the perfect 'tell me about yourself' interview answer.
Not only is it going to be a really effective answer to that question,
but it is also going to be a great foundation for the conversation for the rest
of the interview.
Do make sure that you stay tuned all the way to the end of the video,
because it's really important for you to see how these pieces actually fit
together. Now,
if you're ready for the love formula for the tell me about yourself interview
question, click that like button and let's get right into it.
The love formula breaks down into four different components,
which I'm going to go into details to make sure you know exactly what they are,
so that you can execute them flawlessly.
The LOVE formula breaks down into these four components: label,
origin, value, and engage. Let's dig into what each of these is.
Beginning with label.
Label, if you've watched any of my videos before is probably going to be pretty
straight forward. And if you're not new to my channel,
I bet you can guess what it is. [Game show music]. Got it?
That's right. It's the job title you are interviewing for. Look,
you're going to be identified as however you identify yourself as.
So you might as well be identified as the person who has that job.
For example,
if you're interviewing for an account executive role and you're in sales,
you aren't going to say, I'm a salesperson.
You're going to say I'm an account executive.
It just helps to connect the dots more directly so it takes insinuation
and opportunity confusion off the table.
The next component of the love formula is origin.
Now I'm not talking about like the origin of man,
or you from conception to current date.
What origin means is basically the narrative of how you got from point A to B.
Your origin story is how you ended up doing what you're doing.
Now really what we're doing is we're constructing the narrative
so that it's easy for them to see the pathway,
from the first job that we have on our resume,
all the way to the job that we are actually asking them to hire us for.
If you took a straight path, this is going to be really, really easy.
Because you're just going to give a synopsis about your original interest,
and how it converted into what you went to school for,
and now what you do for a living. For example,
if you always loved computers and programming,
and then you went and you got your computer sciences degree,
and now you work as a software developer, it's so easy to explain.
However, if your pathway wasn't quite so straight, like mine,
then this actually might take a little bit of work to help tie things all
together. For example, if you thought you were going to be a lawyer,
but you ended up working in software professional services,
connecting the dots from A to B is not going to be something that most people
do. And really what you're trying to do in the origin story is talk
about how you were always doing the same consistent things.
Even when you had disparate job titles.
This is going to help affirm to them your breadth and depth of experience,
and it's also going to be a great demonstrator that you really are able to shift
and adapt. As an optional addition here,
you can even tie in the reason whY you're interested in this role,
or why you are looking in general.
It is a common interview question that they're going to ask you,
why you were looking for a new job. And if you do want to preempt that question,
you can include it here. However it's not necessary,
it's probably not going to knock their socks off.
So this one is really up to you, and will depend on your unique circumstance.
And I know the origin story can be kind of hard to nail when you are new to it.
So if you want to tell me your origin story in the comments, drop it in there.
I'm going to give you feedback to make sure it's awesome.
And that brings us into the third component, which is value.
The tricky thing about the 'tell me about yourself' interview question,
is it seemingly about you - but it's actually about them.
And if you've been a good candidate, you've done your research, you've prepared,
and you know exactly what they need.
And you are going to be able to showcase the value that you bring,
and how you're the answer to all their problems.
If you do need some help with the preparations,
what I want you to do is head over to my free Facebook group, the strive squad,
where I am actually running a live series that's
going to help you prepare for the interview,
so you know exactly what value to incorporate here.
But just to give you an example, without you having to make the jump,
you want to identify based on the job advertisement,
what they're really looking for. For example,
if you're a sales representative and they're
hiring an account executive to open up a new region or territory,
and that happens to be something that you are really good at,
you're really passionate about, and you've done multiple times,
this is absolutely something that you need to integrate into your,
'tell me about yourself' answer. When this is done well, and with precision,
you are going to demonstrate the exact value that they need,
and that you are bringing to the table.
And it's going to lead you directly into the fourth component which is engage.
ideally in your 'tell me about yourself' interview question answer,
this is actually going to be integrated along with the value.
Because they really do, they belong together.
In the engage component you want to strategically end on a talking point
which is going to move the conversation to highlight one of your big impacts,
your big talents and how it pertains to what they are looking for.
So drawing from the last example that I just gave about the sales representative
who's really good at opening new territories,
and it's for a role that needs someone to do just that.
They're going to end on that point,
but they may also integrate that they have established a very repeatable
and proven process to quickly accelerate a new region's development
to get them overachieving on revenue.
This is going to be something that the interviewer definitely is going to want
to discuss,
and this leaves both of you in the exact position that you want to be in in a
job interview. And that is discussing the future and the potential fit.
And talking about ideas and having a conversation,
as opposed to just regurgitating stupid interview question answers.
that you've heard off of YouTube.
No offense to myself or any of my colleagues here.
There's one thing that you really need to know about the
tell me about yourself interview question answer.
And this is essential whether or not you're using the LOVE formula.
And that is you need to keep this answer tight.
I generally recommend leaving it to about 90 seconds or so,
because if there is anything that they want to know more about,
and when you are leaving off with a great engagement point,
the conversation is going to organically continue.
Most of the hiring managers that I have spoken with really stopped paying
attention after the five minute point at a maximum.
So it does fluctuate depending on who you're actually speaking to.
But I would say a hard and fast rule is more than a few minutes,
you really need to find a way to stop talking so that it can return to a
conversation and not a monologue.
Trust me, the longwinded answers when you ask someone,
tell me about yourself are actually a form of medieval torture,
and if you've know you've done it before, do it again.
I also want to make sure that you check out this video right here
because it's going to help you with another very common interview question.
And as always, if you found this video helpful, give it a like,
I'll see you next time. Bye for now. [BLOOPERS]