- 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,
you will automatically receive
my free lesson PDFs every week,
plus all of my news, course information, and offers.
It's a free service and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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)