I don’t have ESP so I can’t read your mind
To give you an idea of how bizarre the topics of job searching and career management can be, I will refer to an article I just read from a “career expert” who was trying to explain “How to answer the ‘tell me about yourself’ interview question.”
First off, “tell me about yourself” isn’t a question. It’s a statement and a very open-ended one at that. There is no “?” at the end of the statement because it is not a question.
“Tell me about yourself” tends to be used by people who don’t understand much about interviewing. As a recruiter, I have never sat down in an interview with someone and began by saying “tell me about yourself” because it’s irrelevant and a waste of time. The questions I ask that relate to the job at hand and your skillset and experience will tell me about you and in a far more relevant and direct way than simply throwing out a general statement and hoping you can read my mind and figure out exactly what I want to know.
Back to this article, the “career expert” went on to say that the wrong way to answer the “question” of “tell me about yourself” is to respond by asking “what would you like to know?” Or something similar to that.
Now, that’s a question! “What would you like to know?” ends with a question mark because it is a question. How odd that the first person to ask an actual question in an interview would be the interviewee and not the interviewer!
But according to this “career expert” this is the wrong thing to do. According to him, asking this question would (his words) show him that you hadn’t prepared for the interview and that you’d be equally unprepared for the job.
Huh?
That’s one of the silliest things I’ve ever read.
How can trying to focus on exactly what interests the interviewer be proof that you haven’t prepared for the interviewer or aren’t right for the job?
He then went on to say that when an interviewer says “tell me about yourself” they don’t want to hear about your childhood and where you lived as a kid but that they want you to…
focus on exactly what interests the interviewer(!).
Uh, isn’t that accomplished by asking the interviewer to confirm what it is exactly that interests them, as I just mentioned above?
One of my business school university professors who helped prepare us for interviews used to tell us that if it was him in that interview and the interviewer said “tell me about yourself” he’d take over the interview because it was proof to him that the interviewer didn’t know what they were doing and that he was going to be the one to lead the interview and not the interviewer.
Unless you have extrasensory perception (ESP) you can’t read the mind of the person interviewing you and can’t figure out exactly what they want to know when they say “tell me about yourself.” The logical thing to do would be to then ask for clarification.
Unfortunately, doing so when being interviewed by the likes of the “career expert” who I mentioned above would undoubtedly ruin your chances at the job and for no good reason.
In that regard, your best bet is to know in advance how you will answer this “question” should it arise and it probably will sometime in your career.
Focus on your main accomplishments and how it relates to the job you’re interviewing for. Focus on 2-3 things that highlight your suitability for the job and keep your answer brief, perhaps up to 60 seconds in length. You want to answer the “question” but not give them your life story.
You’ll probably also feel like telling the interviewer that you can’t read their mind but you’ll have to bite your tongue instead.
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