- Most people realize that a good answer
to the tell me about yourself question
sets the tone for the rest of the interview.
What some people miss is that a great answer
will help you influence what the interviewer will ask next.
In this video, I skip all the common advice
you might find in other tutorials
and dive right into number one,
how to structure a strong answer
using the present, past and future answer format.
Number two, how to use the highlight method
to influence the interviewer.
And number three, leave you with an answer I'd give
if I were interviewing right now.
Although there is no one-size-fits all answer
to the tell me about yourself interview question,
there is a strong answer structure
that is universally applicable.
So while I do provide a sample answer at the end,
the main takeaway of this video
should be the methods I use
and how you can apply the same structure
for your own use cases.
Number one, using the present, past
and future answer structure.
Interviewers want to know in order of importance,
who you are right now,
how you got to be there, and what value you can bring
to the role you're interviewing for.
Present, past and future.
Starting with the present,
this is a snapshot of yourself
in your current professional capacity.
It should be kept within one minute
and include the following.
What you do in your current role,
the success metrics you are measured against,
and a recent achievement you are particularly proud of.
If you're working professional,
the present portion might look something like this.
I'm currently a management consulting with Ernst and Young
focus on Finance Shared Service Center projects.
My primary contributions to the team are number one,
organizing training workshops for our clients
adopting the new SAP system.
And number two, putting together pitch decks
through market research
for future business development opportunities.
A recent one I'd like to share is when I use data
from a free trial of eMarketer to put together a deck
on B2B marketing trends in China, which ended up helping
my senior manager close a $500,000 deal.
By stating your current role right off the bat,
you show the interviewer that first and foremost,
you are a professional.
This will also help you stay away
from going off topic into something too personal
and therefore irrelevant.
The town you grew up in, the musical you're a part of.
Then mentioning your own success metrics
shows that you are results oriented.
You know exactly what your goals are on the job.
It also shows you're confident in your capabilities,
because why else would you bring it up?
Finally, the impactful achievement that you briefly touch on
keeps the interviewer engaged with your story
and plants follow up questions in their minds.
Wow, which eMarketing report was this?
Why was the client sold on the B2B marketing trends?
And we'll talk about this concept of influence
a bit more later on.
Although the example I gave just now
was for working professional,
if you're a current student,
you can use the exact same structure.
Simply start off by saying what field of study you're in,
then dive immediately into recent class projects,
internships, and leadership experiences.
Don't worry about the impressiveness level of your story,
but rather the qualities you're conveying about yourself
as you tell it.
If you found this first tip helpful,
drop a like and comment down below
to help me with the YouTube algorithm as they say.
Now on to the past portion of your answer.
This is where you really get to show off
and highlight key strengths or takeaways
you want the interviewer to remember.
This part should be another minute maximum.
Coming up with stories that make you look good is easy.
Keeping them concise, relevant and under one minute is hard.
So here's what we wanna do.
First identify two to three attributes
you feel the role is looking for.
If it's sales, this would be communication,
stakeholder management.
If it's accounting, this might be attention to detail,
strong analytical skills.
Then scroll through your mental Rolodex of experiences,
projects, internships, to figure out which one's best suit
the attributes that they're looking for.
Finally, and this might be the hardest step,
select one key moment within each experience
to serve as the highlight of that experience.
If you're a student interviewing for a marketing position,
your past portion might look something like this.
As the events coordinator for our business fraternity,
I'm responsible for planning, executing
and tracking our weekly workshops.
Since this requires a lot of promotional marketing materials
such as fiscal flyers and email newsletters,
I took the initiative to try free online tools
such as Canva and MailChimp to better engage our members.
After other student bodies
noticed our new marketing materials,
they actually came asking for help.
And so I conducted a small group training
for 30 other event coordinators as a result.
The training received a satisfaction score of 98%.
Some of you might be thinking right now,
well, Jeff, her experience is related to marketing.
So that was an easy answer.
I'm applying to a role I don't have much experience in.
Okay, imagine the same candidate
were applying for an accounting position.
In that case, the same event coordinator
should focus on how she managed the budget
for the entire year
and how she kept track of her fraternity's expenses.
As you can see, the same experience can be
and should be applicable
for the different attributes you wanna highlight.
Finally, the future portion,
this is just a quick 30-second wrap up
where you reinforce the reasons
why you're such a good fit for the role.
The objective here is that the interviewer imagine
ever so slightly,
how it makes such good sense for you to be on their team.
Following the previous example,
let's just say that our event coordinator
is applying for the accounting position.
Her future portion might look something like this.
As someone who has been managing our fraternity's finances
for the past year,
I'm glad to have been able to apply the concepts
that I learned in my accounting classes
in real life situations.
This has further reinforced my interest
in pursuing accounting as a full time career.
My experiences combined by international background
make me a strong asset
to the Financial Advisory Services team at Ernst and Young.
By the way, I have a Facebook group
where I share weekly tips,
consider joining if you haven't already,
I'll link it down below.
Number two, the highlight method.
In a nutshell, the highlight method
is where you take a small part of a larger story
that you have already prepared for
and only include that part
in the tell me about yourself answer as a highlight.
This helps you keep your answer concise
while mentioning something impressive.
If done right, the highlight that you mentioned
should trigger the interviewer to ask follow up questions
that lead to your larger story.
If you've been paying attention up to this point,
you've probably already noticed
that we've been sprinkling in highlights
throughout the present past and future answer structure.
For example, in the present portion to US$ 500,000 deal
that you helped close is the highlight
and you should have the rest of the story prepared
using the star format.
All right, putting off that together.
Here's a sample answer I'd give
if I were interviewing right now.
So Jeff, could you tell me a bit by yourself?
Sure, I'm currently a product marketer
here at Google covering the Greater China region.
I mainly work on App campaigns,
a Google product aimed at app developers.
Specifically, I have two objectives, number one,
to reach as many new-to-Google app developers as possible.
And number two, increase product adoption
among our existing app advertisers.
My team and I achieve these goals
through a mix of online marketing campaigns,
offline events and content marketing.
For example, one of the tentpole events I helped launch
is called Start on Android China,
where we leverage resources
from our Play, Ads and AdMob teams
to deliver a comprehensive training bootcamp
for Greater China App Developers.
The goal is to address their pain points
at each stage of their app export journey.
A notable achievement was when we decided to pivot
from a three-day offline event format
to a three-week online one.
That actually resulted in a five times increase
in eligible signups before marketing,
I was a key account manager in the sales team
covering around 30 B2C Chinese exporters.
Since that's quite a few clients
for just one person to cover.
I actually created YouTube videos to better engage
my clients at scale.
Funny story, you can still actually find those videos
on YouTube right now.
This in addition to the support
for cross functional team members
helped me achieve revenue attainment
without missing targets for two years straight.
Before joining Google, I was a management consultant
with Ernst and Young for two years.
One year based out of New York City
and another out of Shanghai,
I worked on a variety of projects ranging
from supply chain management
to shared service centers.
Due to the nature of these projects,
I would often find myself
as the only consultant physically on site,
and therefore I was really able to develop my communication
and relationship management skills.
Having spent the past six years
in predominantly client-facing roles,
I believe the communication skills I've developed,
combined with my international background,
would make me a strong asset
to your global business development team.
(claps) And there you have it a step by step guide
on how to nail
the tell me about yourself interview question.
I sincerely believe this is the most
important interview question to get right.
Not only because it sets the tone
for the rest of the interview,
but also if you do get it right,
it gives you a huge confidence boost right at the beginning.
I hope this video helped.
Subscribe if you haven't already,
and comment down below if you have any questions.
See you on the next video and in the meantime, (clicks)
have a great one.
(soothing music)