Tell me about yourself
TODO
Sample answers
- For the past 12 years, I’ve been working on backend development.
- I take an evaluative approach to solving problems and work through the process by trying out various solutions.
- I’m a self-starter and work well independently, but I’m also skilled at working in teams.
- I’m used to working in fast-paced environments and I am very driven by goals and deadlines.
- I am used to working in teams of all sizes and shapes. In addition to being a programmer, based on the necessity, I am used to wearing different hats like tester, lead engineer, scrum master, product owner.
- In addition to working with Java, I am also familiar with JavaScript. I learned Haskell just for fun.
- I have a passion for learning. Some of the things I learned from the past experiences are: working with different types of System Designs and Architectures, Process Improvements to deal with issues that I saw with the applications or architectures, the importance of testing and documentation, etc.
- Good communication and collaboration skills.
Why interviewers ask this question?
- Is he capable enough to do the work and take up responsibilities that come with it ?
- To know more about the prospective employee in their company.
- To find out how you differentiate from other candidates.
- To find out how passionate you are about your past experience and achievements.
- They’re not only trying to find out some basic information about you, but they’re also checking how you tell a story.
- To find out if you are concise and to-the-point, or if you drone on and share things that are irrelevant.
- Does his experience prove that he is good fit for the role ?
- The interviewer is asking “help me understand who you are today, as it relates to this position.” Your answers should be framed accordingly.
- The interviewers try to get as much signal out of the interview as possible. They want to see candidates who have engaged deeply in their experiences, demonstrating intellectual curiosity, concern about impact, empathy with users, etc. They want to know how if the candidate’s goals align with the opportunities they are offering. And I want to see how well they communicate.
How can you use this opportunity to answer this question?
The question gives you the opportunity to
- showcase your personality to the recruiters
- let them know how you are a perfect fit for the particular job role
- What the candidates say about themselves absolutely weighs in the interviewers’ decisions.
How to answer the question?
- To be heard by someone, and for that person to be genuinely interested in you, you should not go on and on like a train.
- Start of by telling him your background, create a premise of your story. Where did you do your undergrad or masters or PhD and in what.
- Then state why you chose that specific field you’re applying a job for. For eg. Computer Science, Why did you do your master’s in CS? This will make the person realise you have some direction to your resume.
- Then state what you learned in the past, and be sure to align these techniques well with the job profile. For example, if it is a backend developer position, state technologies such as Java and Python etc. while for frontend state HTML5, JS, CSS3, React etc. Be sure to use the latest Language names (HTML5, CSS3) and so on. This will create a link between you and the job you’re applying for and the employer will realise it.
- Then state your big projects (ofcourse relevant ones) and then state how you had an impact at the previous projects that you worked on.
- A little bit about your personal hobbies also you can add.
- Stay calm in the interview, even if you feel unsure about your answer or looking at interviewers faces that they don’t seem impressed. Every interviewer appreciates sincerity. Take a bit of time before answering a question to formulate your answer.
- Talk in the term of clients you worked with, how big the team was, how important your role was and how responsible you were. Try to show that your opinion always mattered in your previous projects.
- Talk about the domain and functionality of the projects you have worked upon. Talk about the technologies and how adaptive and quick and keen learner you were in all your projects so far.
- End your words by telling them how awesome the company is, and that in the end you would be the one who is gonna glean and learn a lot more working with them.
- Good answers includes what motivates you to excel, unique experience which makes you valuable to them, and why you want to work at the company. Pro-tip: don’t say “money” or “to move to that city.”
-
Continue telling your story supporting it with any activities and responsibilities you took up during your college or even in school.
-
Do not fake any information. Look them in the eye with confidence and answer the question.
-
Since this is just the first question, take about 3 minutes to answer this questions.
-
The answer need to contain some sentence that would invoke a question from interviewer on a topic that you are very comfortable talking on.
-
Talk about what work you did. Tell about tasks and responsibilities you took up. Describing any achievements or difficult, high impact tasks completed would greatly enhance your chances here. Make sure what you talk answers the above question that interviewer would have in mind.
-
Talk in short about your name, place where you come from and your education. Mention hobbies as well.
-
It’s always important to have your own “story” to stand out as a candidate.
-
Start by walking them through your career evolution (i.e. how you got started, why you chose java) and how that shaped your career.
-
Be clear that you CHOSE this path - show your passion.
-
Make sure to appear conversational as well (but also be mindful not to talk about random, irrelevant topics)!
-
Pick your recent projects and enthusiastically brief them on the projects.
Also is imperative that during your briefing, you demonstrate on a high level how you applied your skills and knowledge in some of the following key areas: Design Pattern, Performance and memory issues, Exception handling, Multi threading.
-
Step 1: Start with your Name
-
Step 2. “Your designation” with Company Name
-
Step 3. Total years of experience with all the skills set.
-
Step 4. Responsibility (Role)
-
Step 4. Strength.
-
Step 6. Domain in which you have worked or working.
-
Step 7. List the entire Project Client name.
-
I am “Name XYZ”
-
Working as a “Software Engineer” in “XYX Company” at “Bangalore, City name like XYZ”.
-
I have 3 Years of experience in Core Java/J2EE, Hibernate, Spring Framework, Design Pattern, Apache Tomcat, JBoss, Websphere, Oracle, JUnit, Log4j, XML, JEERA and Maven etc.
-
My responsibility includes design and development of user interface using Java/J2EE
-
Technologies, providing technical support and knowledge transfer to my co-workers.
-
I have a good knowledge of Spring MVC Web application development.
-
I have worked in different domain like E-Commerce, Banking, and Insurance domain.
-
I have worked on Project like XYZ Project Name.
-
I have worked for some of the clients like Nokia, Samsung, and Oracle etc. .
For example: “I love to program and have done so for 8,000 hours over the past three years. I’m great at knowing the right algorithm for a problem because I read computer science literature constantly. Algorithms problems are to me like sudoku is to my grandmother. I love working with people to do things bigger than I could accomplish alone. I’m motivated by big problems, and I think you’ve got some here that I can help solve.”
If you’re a new grad, you focus on what resonates with you and what you want to do. For example, “I liked computer games as a kid, and wanted to make my own. I heard computers are a good career too, so I went to university in computer science. Once I was there I realized writing operating systems was what I like the best. I like the challenge of it, and working close to the hardware. I do my best work in very complicated systems, because I’m good at keeping track of many details and making few mistakes. I want to do this sort of work moving forward, especially as long as I get to work on something lots of people will use!”
The intent would be to get you to open up, talk about something you know well (yourself), and put you at ease.
People are often nervous going into job interviews, and a nervous person typically doesn’t do well on any interview, behavioural or otherwise.
You might also get asked about some things on your resume, but not in depth, such as “Oh, I see you went to Ohio State; that’s a beautiful campus; I went there, and lived in Baker Hall West my first year. At first I was annoyed that they make freshmen live on campus unless they are exempted. Did you enjoy going there?”
Once you were comfortable talking to the interviewer, the actual interview would begin from that point, and hopefully your nervousness, if any, would be behind you, so you could give your best interview.
Google isn’t paying basically $300/hour to have an engineer sit in a room with you for an hour and intimidate the hell out of you; they hope you are successful, so that they won’t have wasted that money, and can extend you a job offer at the end of the process.
If you end up working at Google, you’re going to know your coworkers, and most of them will not be very intimidating, once you’ve eaten lunch with them and seen a burrito fall apart down the front of their shirt.
The want to be talking to the person who would be working at Google, not someone about to rabbit for the parking lot.
Making you comfortable in the interview is one of the ways they achieve this.
In my experience, “tell me about yourself” is usually a generic, warm up question at the very beginning of the formal interview. You may consider that to be a transitional question carrying little value on its own - but you can hardly go wrong with this one.
Also, plenty of interviewers will ask the question while they sift through the CV and your portfolio during your answer.
It’s an opportunity for the interviewer to continue the conversation based on your answer - asking follow-up questions regarding your qualifications, previous employment, your college activities or anything else you decide to bring up.
Sure, you can start off stuttering or come up with a brief and incomplete answer. That’s still not a deal breaker and most interviewers will step back and try to put you in a comfortable mood for the interview.
Answer with two-three sentences discussing your core specialty, your experience to date, and relevant skills that may be valuable for the job. The interviewer will note that and proceed onto the next set of questions they care about.
Perhaps this is best answered with an example.
“Hi, I’m Barry Rountree. I’m currently working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the problem of how to build supercomputers that are a thousands times faster than what we have today but using only twice as much power — about 20 megaWatts. I took my PhD at UArizona under David Lowenthal, I have an honors undergrad degree in Theater, and I’m spinning up a side project that applies theatrical performance theory to computer code. I also have an interest in bibliography (particularly mathematical bibliography) and how Wikipedia can be used to improve scholarship in this area.”
The point of the question is to give the interviewer several “hooks” for follow-up questions, in this case, “supercomputers”, “megaWatts”, “UArizona”, “performance theory”, “mathematical bibliography” and “Wikipedia”.
I wouldn’t mention awards or accomplishments — those should be in your resume, and they’re awkward conversation starters (and you’ll probably come across as both insecure and bragging if you do mention them). For your areas of specialization you should wait for the follow-up questions before getting into technical jargon (e.g., “dramaturgical approach to performative aspects of interfaces” might be more correct, but it shuts down potential conversation). Leave out more common interests for the same reason (e.g., “I like cats.” Not a lot you can do with that.).
Basically, you want to come across as both technically and conversationally competent.
It’s crucial that you think about your answer to this question before you start interviewing for jobs, regardless of the industry and position. It’s an easy one to get stuck on and stumble, which can throw you off for the rest of the interview.
The way you answer this question reveals a lot about you and what you consider to be important. Don’t immediately launch into discussing every professional achievement you’ve had or focus only on work. This is unnatural and doesn’t give the interviewer a glimpse into your human side. They want to know you’ll fit with the company culture, and that is what this question is designed to determine. Think of a response that combines your personal life, your interest in your work, and your future goals. Sound like a complicated thing to concoct? This is why it’s so important to think about your response before the interview, so you aren’t caught off-guard.
If family is important to you, talk about your family and how they’ve supported you through your professional career. Talk about what you enjoy doing in your free time, bonus if it includes personal software engineering projects. If you love travel, bring up a trip that you’ve taken that “changed your life” in some way. The key is to be interesting without bragging, confident but not arrogant, and tell a story that isn’t too long and doesn’t derail the entire interview. Think of painting a picture of your life and who you are in a few moments, without revealing too much information or telling any inappropriate stories.
For extra preparation and practice before the real thing, consider practicing mock coding interviews online with platforms like Pramp and Leetcode. On these platforms, you can practice the technical portion of the interview with another software engineer. Beyond that you can practice your communication skills with interview questions similar to this. You’ll get feedback on your responses, so you can tailor how you answer this (and other interview questions).
Regardless of any job profile or any company – ‘Tell Me About Yourself’, it is undeniably the very first question that you often face in every interview. The question gives you the opportunity to showcase your personality to the recruiters and let them know how you are a perfect fit for the particular job role.
Now, when it is quite confirmed that you’re going to be asked this question in your upcoming interviews – don’t you think you must be prepared for this question ideally and flawlessly to stand out among other candidates…?? A Big YES…!!
However, most of the time, candidates especially freshers ignore to prepare for this basic question and end up giving a not-so-entertaining answer for it that eventually set the negative tone for the rest of the interview.
With similar concern, here in this article, we’ll let you know about the correct approach that you should follow to give an impressive and accomplished answer to the “Tell Me About Yourself” question in an Interview. But before that, let’s take a look at an appropriate prototype answer to this question for better understanding:
Sample Answers
“Hi, My name is Anurag Sharma. I’ve recently done my Bachelors in Technology with Computer Science stream from XYZ University with 9 CGPA. Also, I did my 12th & 10th from CBSE Board in the year 2016 and 2014 respectively. Though I am currently staying in Delhi – I was born and brought up in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, and did my schooling from there. Considering my family background details – we’re 4 members in the family. Apart from my parents, I have a sibling – an elder brother.
As you’d have known – I am here for the role of ABC. Coming to my skills I know mention all those skills that you possess and are relevant to the job role that you’re applying for. I had 2 internships as well in this particular domain where along with core technical things I also learned organizational ethics and discipline. Moreover, I also did 2 successful individual projects on the particular technology in my college tenure. You can also opt to brief the project & internship details here
To be honest, my short-term goal is to get a job in a reputed company like the company name for which you’re applying where I can use my skills and knowledge to deliver value-added result and in long term, the goal would be to achieve a good position in the particular company to scale up organization’s production & growth rate and at the same time for the betterment of my personal career growth as well. Other than that, if I talk about my strengths – I can say that I’m a quick learner, team player, adaptable and creative person – and I do guess that these strengths of mine are perfectly suitable for this job role.
In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my family, reading, playing outdoor sports, and sometimes cooking.
That’s all about me. And yes, thanks for the opportunity given to introduce myself!”
Okay, so this how you are expected to answer “Tell Me About Yourself” in an interview. However, you need to understand you can’t use a specific answer for this question in all your interviews – you need to analyze the situation & job opportunity and craft your answer accordingly. Now, to help you out in compiling the perfect response to “Tell me about yourself” – below we’ve provided the most effective approaches that you all can consider:
- Firstly, you need to start it with a greeting and telling your name to the interviewer. Though, you need to remember that if you’ve already greeted then avoid doing it again and simply start it by telling your full name.
- Then you can opt to provide your education qualification details along with few basic details such as where do you live, about family members, etc. Try to keep the information clear, concise, and relevant to the interview.
- Now, you need to focus on this particular aspect – ‘What makes you a great fit for this position?’ You can do it by describing your skillset to the recruiter, telling him/her about the projects and internships that you have done and how they are relevant to the particular job role, about the relevant certifications or achievements that you have earned, etc. Also, you can let the interviewer know that why are you interested in the particular company or job role.
- After that, you need to tell about your short-term and long-term career goals to the interviewer. Do remember that when you are telling about your goals – it should not be too self-centered. Then, you can let the interviewer know about your personal strengths & weaknesses and how they can be valuable for the company. You can make use of past incidents or experiences to validate the said strengths.
- In the end, you can tell about your hobbies in a quite concise way and can opt to be thankful to the interviewer for giving you this opportunity.
Key Points to Remember While Answering – “Tell Me About Yourself”:
- Customize your answer as per the job role and company requirements from the candidate.
- Do not just recite your resume – provide something valuable with your answer and that too, in a concise way.
- Tell about your skills, experience, strengths, etc. in such a way so that it will depict how you are the ideal candidate for the particular job role.
- Do not get too personal or bring up sensitive topics like religious views, political views, etc. in your answer.
- Practice your answer before the interview to feel confident – but make sure that it won’t look too rehearsed.
- Lastly, try to be positive and deliver your answer confidently.
So, all you need to do is follow the above-mentioned approaches and keep your answer concise & relevant – and then no one can stop you to shine in your upcoming interview…!!
My previous answer. This is very crude and needs a lot of refinement.
- I ve 10 six years of IT experience…
- experience with designing and developing enterprise applications in java platform, J2EE, Enterprise Java Beans, EJB design patterns, J2EE design patterns
- server side programming components like JSPs, servlets
- frameworks like Spring, Struts, hibernate, collections, JSFs, Annotations…
- internet technologies like ajax, web services,
- databases like oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, MS Access…
- Application servers JBoss, Websphere, WebLogic…
- build tools like Apache Maven and Gradle…
- IDEs like eclipse, netbeans, IBM RAD…
- In my most recent project, I was a part of a team of 6 members.
- We used to work under an architect. Used to develop modules. development of modules. (explain a module related to banking).
- The actual application has 2 clients 1. administrators 2. webclient (JSF) customer - account - transaction info session beans for webclient modules - account controller bean - customer controller bean - TX controller bean