Cracking the interview icebreaker question

Your time to introduce yourself is your best chance to impress and steer the conversation with your interviewer.

The Icebreaker question

“Tell me a bit about yourself” is very often how it goes. Icebreaker questions are mainly aimed at getting the conversation started. The interviewer is likely meeting you for the first time. As humans, we need something to get a conversation started, and in the setting of an interview, an apt thing is for the persons present, to introduce themselves.

While the words about themselves from the interviewers are good for you to know who you are speaking to, your introduction is really the one that matters most. What you say in response to this question can help steer the conversation in your favor, and create an amazing impression to start off with.

Context

Before getting into deciding what you want to talk about, first think about the context of the question. What type of interview round is it? Leadership? phone screening? Coding challenge? Depending on what the interview round is for, your answer to introducing yourself will help set up the mood and the next actions/questions.

If it is a coding challenge interview, the interviewer is very unlikely to know a lot about you, but just a bit about who you are at this stage of life.

If it is a leadership round, the interviewer is likely going to go deep into certain aspects of your career…