Tell Me About Yourself - Structure a Strong Answer
About this video
Su teaches a structure for the ’tell me about yourself’ interview question designed not just to sound good but to steer what the interviewer asks next. The format is present, past and future. Present, kept to about a minute, covers your current role, the metrics you are measured against, and one recent achievement — for students, their field of study plus projects, internships and leadership. Past, another minute, is built backwards: identify two or three attributes the target role wants, pick experiences that prove them, and select one highlight moment from each; the same experience can be reframed for different roles, such as event coordination told as marketing for one job and budget management for an accounting job. Future, about thirty seconds, connects that background to this team so the interviewer can picture you in it. Layered over this is the highlight method: mention only a small, impressive slice of a larger story you have fully prepared in STAR format, prompting follow-up questions you are ready to answer. He closes with a full sample answer from his own consulting-to-Google career.
Key takeaways
- Structure the answer present, past, future — roughly one, one and half a minute
- Present: role, success metrics and one recent achievement
- Past: match experiences to the attributes this role is hiring for
- Reframe the same experience differently for different roles
- Use highlights: tease a slice of a STAR story to steer follow-up questions
Episode details: published August 19, 2020 · 9:27 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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