“Tell Me About Yourself.”

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Does that sound familiar? Just about everyone I have spoken to tells me that’s their first interview question. At first I thought, there’s no way that’s true, or it was a weird coincidence. It won’t happen to me! Boy, was I wrong…

I started paying more attention to my interviews and believe it or not just about every interview’s first question was “Tell Me About Yourself” or some form of that. “Tell Me About Yourself” comes up in more places than just interviews: Elevators, career fairs, networking dinners, and anywhere else that you could run into a potential employer… That’s crazy! That means anywhere is fair game for “Tell Me About Yourself”

When I got hit with the “Tell Me About Yourself” I said some stuff about what I was studying, what I did in the past that was relevant to them and I said what I was looking forward to doing with them. I feel like there was more that I could’ve said or just a better way to present it.

The problem is that the question seems sooooooooooooooooooo open and I love to talk! So, it’s like what do you talk about? Do you say your favorite color or your favorite food? Do you talk about your family, your childhood or hometown? There is a ton of stuff to talk about when someone asks you “Tell Me About Yourself” Although, no one knows more about you than yourself, sometimes responding to this can be incredibly difficult for people.

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So what can you do to make sure you’re not one of those people fumbling to answer? Easiest thing to do is get help from the pros. The Career Development Center noticed that people could use some help. It turns out that the response to “Tell Me About Yourself” is called an Elevator Pitch.

There is a cool contest that is wrapping up called Job Idol. It is an opportunity for people with rockstar elevator pitches to enter them in a contest and win prizes. So what’s the catch? No catch, in fact even if you don’t feel like entering the contest you can benefit from the new resources that the contest uses.

1. Interview Stream. Interview stream, is our online practice interview. You can record your elevator pitch and 9 other responses to interview  questions. If you want more on interview stream you should check this out.

2. The next resource that you can play around with is the DEVELOPING YOUR ELEVATOR PITCH handout. I wont hand this one to you like I did with the blog. To get this, you need to log onto jobfinder –> click resources –> click podcasts & handouts –> search for elevator

or just stop by the CDC and grab one from the spinning shelf. This handout is awesome, it has tips, questions to think about and even a sample elevator pitch.

Anyway with these resources, the next time you’re hit with “Tell Me About Yourself” you’ll be ready!

Adam had some more insight on elevator pitches.

Thanks for stoppin’ by
– Sam