Unravelling the Golden Interview Question: “Tell Me About Yourself”
Many hiring managers claim that they know whether a candidate is a good fit for a role within the first 5 minutes of an interview. It takes me bit longer than that, but more than one candidate has run aground trying to navigate the first question I ask in every single interview I conduct.
Can you tell me a little about yourself?
Many simple things conceal hidden depths, and judging by the occasional startled, or even panicked expressions of the candidates I have interviewed, this question is no different.
Before we discuss what constitutes a “good” answer to this question, let’s consider why I ask it in every interview — from interns to senior engineering leaders.
- It breaks the ice. Interviews are stressful, particularly for the candidates and giving the candidate a chance to speak about something they should know a lot about (themselves) often has a visibly calming effect.
- It hands control of the interview to the candidate by allowing the candidate to tell me what they think are the most important aspects of themselves. Most candidates will use this opportunity to speak about their career or qualifications and their suitability for the role, but sometimes a candidate will also choose to talk about their families or their non-work passions.
- It’s a completely open ended question. No other question offers the same scope for a candidate to demonstrate their communication skills, their personality and their time-management.
- It opens a conversation, not an interrogation. While this is always my first question, my second question differs from candidate to candidate, because it is driven by their answer to the first. It is not unusual for me to get 30 minutes through that first interview without needing to reach for my prepared questions. And a conversation will always convey more information than an examination.
I hope you can see just how powerful a tool this simple question can be. So why does it go wrong so often? Why is this question, more than any other, the one that sinks a candidate’s chances? There are three fatal mistakes/problems that I’ve seen come up time and again.
- The all-too-brief answer. Whether as a result of no preparation, a nerves-induced brain freeze, or just poor communication skills, many unsuccessful candidates have attempted to answer this question in the form of a tweet — and a pre-2017 140 character tweet at that.
“I’m Jack, I’m a software engineer and I’m here to interview for the role of senior software engineer with your company” (118 chars) is boring, gives me nothing I can follow up on and is all information I already know. As I outline above — this is an important question. Give it some effort. - The NeverEnding Story answer. This is far less common than a too-brief answer, but it has happened from time-to-time. I had one recent interview where the candidate spent 35 minutes answering this question— on a 45 minute call. He detailed every role he’d ever had and every project he’d ever been involved in. My co-interviewer faked a schedule clash to justify dropping off the call halfway through — if only I’d thought of that first. Be selective in what you choose to highlight.
- The incoherent answer. This interview question offers insight into how the candidate communicates, for good and for bad. Modern software development is as much about good communication as it is about programming language syntax and design patterns — more so even. When a candidate rambles aimlessly, hops from point to point, abandons sentences mid-way through, or is generally unintelligible, that’s a bad start to an interview. And ultimately, that’s how I will assume you’re going to communicate whenever I ask for a project status update or how your weekend was.
Now the good news is, all of these problems can be avoided with one simple hack:
Prepare an answer.
This question (or the many variants of it) is certainly the most common interview question by a wide margin. Having a prepared answer for it is essential.
So what does a good answer to this look like? Well…that depends on you. Your best answer to this question is the one that presents you in the best possible light — but the colour of that light is individual to you.
As an example — my best answer to his question will be very different to that offered by an early career developer, because while I might want to present myself as a grizzled veteran who is a “safe pair of hands”, an early career developer may want to project enthusiasm and a passion for learning new things.
That said, there are a few guidelines you might want to consider when building your answer:
- Length: 1-2 minutes is a nice length, but you can go up to 3 or 4 if you have enough relevant things to talk about — for example, a long career that you want to summarise.
- Topics to touch on:
Your experience, e.g. ”I’ve got x years of experience in backend development”
Your most recent role, e.g. “I’ve been doing cool stuff at this company for the last x years”
Why you are interested in this role, e.g. “I’m currently looking for a new role that will offer me opportunities to develop in areas x, y, and z” - Topics to avoid:
Criticism of yourself — this isn’t the time to tell me you suck at paperwork (true story)
Inappropriate personal information — I don’t need to know that you have a bad relationship with your family (true story)
Badmouthing current/past employer — don’t do this; no matter how eloquently you describe your past employer’s faults, there’s a little voice in the back of my head wondering if you were the problem (many true stories).
So that’s all theory — what might this answer look like in practice? Below I’ve drafted a few brief (but not too brief) answers to this question that I might have asked at various points in my career.
Early career James:
I’m James, and I’m a recent graduate from Aston University in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. As part of my degree I did a 12 month industrial placement with Service Birmingham as a .NET developer working on management information systems for Adult Education Providers. During my final year, I was the Aston University nominee for the City of Birmingham Silver Jubilee Engineering Award that recognises the best engineering student across all the universities in Birmingham. Right now I’m looking for graduate roles that will enable me to grow and strengthen my skills as a software developer.
Mid career James
I’m James, and I’m a mid-level software engineer with 4 years of experience, working primarily in .NET development roles in the local government sector. My most recent role was with Service Birmingham, who are responsible for Birmingham City Council’s ICT provision. As part of that role I lead the development of the City Council’s Public Consultation Database, which was launched last year. Right now I am looking for a role that offers new challenges — in particular I would like to broaden my horizons beyond the .NET stack and make use of my knowledge of data science and machine learning.
Current career James (note for current boss: don’t panic, Nick, I’m not going anywhere!)
I’m James and I’m an experienced engineer and engineering leader with 17 years of experience across the public, private and academic sectors. My most recent role has been as a CTO of an ad-tech startup, where I lead a team of X engineers. Our software has been rolled out worldwide to Xm people and has been trusted by major brands such as BigCo and BiggerCo, but my wider career has seen me touch on a number of individual contributor and management roles, across software development, data science and artificial intelligence research. I’m currently looking for a role where someone will pay me to sit on a beach and drink cocktails (call me!).
I hope this has been useful. It might seem like a lot of effort for what is, after all, just one of many questions you will be facing in your interview. But remember: you only get one shot at a first impression. Make it a good one.