Tell Me About Yourself

Hey, everybody, Don Georgevich here with Job Interview Tools. And today, I’m going to tell you how to answer, “Tell me about yourself” the fast and easy way to do it in three simple steps.

I mean, most people make this question so much harder than it is. Well, part of the problem is people search out how to answer, “Tell me about yourself” on YouTube and they find like a thousand different videos and each one of them is different. They are like, “Well, do this. You need to do that. You need to do it this way. You need to do it my way. You need to do it that way.” All these different ways and all they do is confuse people.

So, if you want to know how to answer, “Tell me about yourself” the right way, go ahead, let me know now by hitting the “Like” button on this video. Subscribe to my channel and ring the bell and dive right in and we will nail this question once and for all for you.

And you’ll have a simple, easy framework that you can use and apply to your experience and be able to go into a job interview and just easily and effortlessly tell them about you.

Tell me about yourself Step 1

So, first step. There’s three steps; Where do you start? What do you say and where to end? So, the key to answering this question depends on where you’re at in your career. So, you might be fresh out of college or you might have been working for 10 or 20 years. Your answer to, “Tell me about yourself” depends on that.

So, if you’re fresh out of college and let’s say you are going to college for accounting, you might say,

Tell me about yourself if recent college graduate

“During high school, I realized that I’ve enjoyed Accounting 1 and Accounting 2. And I found it fascinating. The numbers made a lot of sense to me. And I really enjoyed creating models. And I decided that’s what I wanted to do. So, I went to college to pursue a career in accounting.

And while I was there, I was active in a few different financial clubs and I furthered my experience in accounting. And I had a couple of internships at here and there (Name those companies).

And now, I am looking to get an accounting position in a big accounting firm. And hopefully, within the next three to five years, I will seek out my CPA.”

That’s it. That’s done. That’s what, like 30 seconds? That’s all you need to do to answer, “Tell me about yourself.” That’s all the employer wants to hear. And you can do that in 20 or 30 seconds.

The trick to answering tell me about yourself

Now, here’s the trick. You need to have two versions of your answer. So, I gave you the short version. You’re going to want to have a long version. Now, I would encourage you to create your long version first. And the long version, maybe, let’s say it’s 2 minutes long. Now, that’s still going to be too long to give in an interview. But create a 2-minute version, condense that long version down to maybe it’s 45 seconds to a minute.

And the long version, it’s still going to be the same thing as the short version. So, to speak. You’re just going to be a little bit longer. You’re still going to talk about how you got started in accounting, what you liked about it, what it meant to you. Then you’re going to talk about your accounting years in college and maybe just a little bit more detail about what you did. Maybe some of the clubs that you were active in.

Then you’re going to go into a little bit more detail about the internships that you had and what you did, what you liked about those. And then you’re going to wrap it up with the end point of, “Hopefully in the next 3 to 5 years, I would like to be employed by a large accounting firm and doing accounting for small businesses and hopefully achieve my CPA.” So, you have a long and short version.

Long and short version of tell me about yourself

Here’s why you have a long and a short version. Let’s say, for example, you go and do the job interview and you sit down with the hiring manager and he’s like, “Okay, Bob, tell me about yourself.” So, when he says it like that and you have maybe 45 minutes to interview, you can probably give the hiring manager the long version; the 45 seconds to a minute. Tell him the whole story.

After you interview the hiring manager, the hiring manager is probably going to introduce you to some other people who may interview you. Now, you may only have 15 minutes. They might say, “Hey, Bob, come here. I want you to meet the director of human resources. Why don’t you sit down with her for about 15 minutes.” and she’s going to say, “Okay, Bob, tell me about yourself.” You really can’t give her the long version. That’s where you give her the short, compressed version; the one that takes 15 seconds, almost like an elevator pitch.

You have to know when to give the long and want to give the short, because if you don’t have two different versions, you’re going to end up giving everybody the long version. And you know what’s going to happen? They’re going to get bored. Or I interview people all the time; they’re going to cut you off and they’re going to be like, “Hey, that’s great, Bob. We got to move on. We don’t have time to listen to your life story. “So, you got it? Simple enough?

So, if you fresh out of college, you create a starting point of when you want to start. And maybe that’s in high school for you or maybe that’s earlier in your career or maybe your starting point is college. Maybe you went to college for something and you changed your major. So, you create your starting point there.

That’s really the key. You don’t have to start in high school. You just have to decide what your starting point is.

And that’s one of the problems with all the other videos. They tell you, “You need to start in high school. You need to start in college. You need to talk about every job you’ve ever had.”

Now, all that stuff is just pure garbage. That’s somebody else pressing and forcing their model onto you that doesn’t fit you because you are a unique individual. You need to create a story around you that fits you.

So, decide where you want to start. Decide what you want to talk about, and then decide where you want to end your story.

And then create two versions. Create the long one first and then create the short one. And that’s all you’ve got to do.

Closing your answer to tell me about yourself

So, here’s a little tip. So, when you’re closing your answer, you know how I talked about in the accounting example where I’m looking to work in a large accounting firm and get my CPA within the next three to five years? You want to end that in a way that’s aligned with the position.

So, if you’re interviewing for any type of accounting position, they’re obviously going to want you to get your CPA someday. So, it’s good to include that type of information in your response. And it just kind of rounds out your answer and finishes that off in a nice professional way that shows that you are aligned with the goals of that organization. So, that’s how you answer, “Tell me about yourself” when you’re fresh out of college.

But what about if you’ve been working for 20 or 30 years? Well, you still need to decide when to start your story. And then you need to decide what you’re going to say and then you need to create that ending point like I talked about.

So, let’s take me, for example. If someone asked me, “Tell me by yourself”, I would start off and say,

Tell me about yourself sample answer if working for 10 years

“Well, I went to college for Computer Technology. After I graduated from college, I ended up working in the IT industry where I assisted small businesses by implementing new computer systems for them.

After working in the IT for a while, I ended up graduating to a Project Manager where I worked and hired a lot of different engineers for various projects. And after 20 years in the field, I retired from Information Technology and I moved into creating digital training programs that help job seekers interview and prepare for interviews.

And today, I worked with employers and I teach them how to properly interview job candidates so that they find the proper alignment in their company.”

That’s it. That’s the real, “Tell me about yourself” for Don Georgevich.

Now, that’s the short version. If you ask me the long version, if you’ll notice, I’m going to cover all the same points, but I’m just going to expand on them.

So, I would say;

The real tell me about yourself for Don Georgevich

“I went to college for Computer Technology. After I graduated from college, I worked for NASA in Cleveland, Ohio, for about 5 years, where I evaluated different technologies and I brought in a lot of different technology vendors to the NASA laboratory to showcase their technology so that other engineers could see what was new and what was the greatest.

After 5 years at NASA, I moved on and I worked at a small IT company in Cleveland, Ohio, where I learned a lot of Microsoft technologies and I learned how to implement those solutions into small businesses, manufacturing businesses in the Cleveland area.

And after doing that for a while, I moved up into a Project Manager role where I would manage other engineers. And then I graduated to a level where I started hiring other engineers for various projects.

And after doing that for about 20 years, I moved on to starting my own business where I wrote books and I taught job seekers how to interview for jobs. I’ve also created books on how to write resumés and cover letters and just a lot of different training programs.

I’ve created a massive YouTube channel with a huge following on it. And today I’ve moved on from training job seekers on how to interview for jobs to training employers on how to properly interview candidates for jobs.”

So, there you go. That’s the long version of the, “Tell me about yourself” for Don Georgevich.

And you can see, the short version kind of just captures all the same points that I touched about in the long version. But the long version just kind of decompresses my story a little bit more and gives you just a better feel.

Now, it depends. Sometimes, I might give the short version, depending on how much time I have or am I give the long version. I mean, that’s all there is to it.

And how you answer the question really depends on you and what you feel. I mean, there’s other videos out there. So, be careful when you watch them and try not to force your life’s story into somebody else’s template. Your answer needs to come from you, from your heart and what you feel.

Don’t feel that you need to jam every accomplishment that you’ve ever had into the story, because that’s not what the employers are asking. They’re saying, “Tell me about yourself.” They’re not asking you to tell me what your greatest accomplishments in every job that you’ve ever had. They want to see that you are the real deal, that you are genuine.

Answering follow-up questions for tell me about yourself

Now, if they want to know more about you than just going to ask. They’re going to be like, “So, Don, can you tell me a little bit more about your time at NASA?” or “Can you tell me a little bit more time about when you were a Microsoft trainer?” They might pick parts of your story that they want to know more about.

So, don’t feel that you need to give them the full story the first time. Just touch on all those elements and create a little story so that your short version is like 10 or 15 seconds long and your long version is maybe 45 to 60 seconds at the most. And that’s all you’ve got to do. That’s all there is to it.

Now, I hate to break this to you, but that’s all I have for you. And they are going to ask you all their questions in your interview other than, “Tell me about yourself.” It’s usually one of the first questions they ask, but they’re going to ask you other questions. And from that, I have the perfect thing for you.