How To Answer The “Tell Me About Yourself” Question As A Digital Analyst
Whether you’re having a preliminary phone screen, speaking to the hiring manager, or sitting down with the CEO during a final round, “Tell me about yourself” is often the first question asked during an interview.
It may sound like a challenging question because it’s open ended, and you may not be sure what the interviewer wants to hear. Luckily, you can prepare in advance and use this common opening prompt to your advantage, setting the stage for a successful interview.
Why Interviewers Ask It
As with any interview question, the key to crafting an impressive answer is understanding why people are asking in the first place.
Beyond serving as an icebreaker, this introductory question helps recruiters and hiring managers accomplish what’s often one of their major goals in the hiring process: getting to know you. Your answer to this question helps the interviewer figure out the next question, which might help start a chain effect of follow-up questions and lend an easy flow to the conversation.
If you answer it well, the interviewers will begin to find out why you’re the best candidate for this job, in terms of hard skills and experience as well as soft skills. It’s a great opportunity to demonstrate that you can communicate clearly and effectively, connect with and react to other humans, and present yourself professionally.
Interviewers might have their own versions of the prompt that are asking pretty much the same thing, including:
I have your resume in front of me but tell me more about yourself.
Walk me through your resume.
I’d love to hear more about your journey.
Tell me a little bit more about your background.
A Simple Formula for Answering “Tell Me About Yourself”
A simple and effective formula for structuring your response is: present, past, future.
Present: Start by discussing your current role, and highlight major, accomplishments and responsibilities that are relevant to the role you’re interviewing for.
Past: Summarize previous experiences and how they’ve prepared your for the role. Focus on results and quantify them as much as you can.
Future: Finish by explaining how your experience will make you successful in the role, and how the job aligns with your career goals.
This isn’t the only way to build your response, of course, and you can tweak it as you see fit. If there’s a particularly potent story about what brought you into this field, for example, you might decide to start with that “past” story and then get into what you’re doing in the present.
Whatever order you pick, make sure you ultimately tie it to the job and company. “A good place to end it is to give a transition of this is why I’m here,” You want to be absolutely certain your interviewer is left with the impression that it “makes sense that [you’re] sitting here talking to me about this role.”
How To Answer The “Tell Me About Yourself” Question
Okay, so you’ve got an interview coming up and you know it’s probably going to start with some form of “tell me about yourself.” Here are a few tips to help you structure your answer:
1. Tailor Your Answer To The Role and Company
“When an interviewer asks that, they really mean tell me about yourself as it’s relevant to the position you’re applying for and this company. They’re giving you an opportunity to articulate why you have the right qualifications.
Take advantage of the opportunity! Begin by rereading the job description. Take note of the required skills that you have and identify recent actions that demonstrate them. Ideally, you should draw primarily from recent professional experience; however, volunteer work can also support your narrative while demonstrating a commitment to your community.
2. Focus On Strengths and Abilities That You Can Support With Examples
When you start building the script of each example, focus on details and outcomes that you can quantify if possible. For example, stating that you “improved customer service” is less impactful than “increased customer service response rates each quarter by 10% to 15%.” If you don’t have the exact information, estimate a realistic value.
3. Highlight your personality to break the ice
Since the “tell me about yourself” interview question is about getting to know you, it’s a good idea to share your personality with your interviewer—but not personal details. You may want to briefly mention hobbies that demonstrate intellectual development and/or community engagement (e.g., reading, music, sports league, volunteering) or those that showcase personal discipline and achievement (e.g., learning a new skill, training for a half marathon). Discussing personal interests is a good way to wrap up your response while maintaining a professional tone.
4. Be Concise (and Definitely Don’t Recite Your Resume)
Whatever you do, don’t waste this time regurgitating every single detail of your career.
The interviewer is getting an example of your how you communicate in meetings with co-workers, bosses, and clients. Are you going to ramble for 10 minutes every time someone asks you a somewhat open-ended question?
There’s no scientifically proven optimal length for answering this or any interview question. Some coaches and recruiters will tell you to keep it to 30 seconds or less, while others will say you should aim for a minute, or talk for no more than two minutes.
In general, however, remember that you don’t have to relay your entire life story here, Dea says. Think of it as a teaser that should pique the interviewer’s interest and give them a chance to ask follow-up questions about whatever intrigues them most.
5. Practice (But Don’t Memorize)
You don’t want to wait until you get this question in a live interview to try out your answer for the first time. Think through what you want to convey about yourself ahead of each interview and practice saying it out loud. I have a general response typed up and saved in my files. I tailor the general response to fit the role and company I’m applying to, and then practice saying it out loud a few times for 2 or 3 days before the interview date.
6. Know Your Audience
As with any interview question—or conversation for that matter—you’ll want to make sure you understand who you’re talking to. You might get some form of “tell me about yourself” at every single stage of the interview process for a job, from the phone screen through final rounds, but that doesn’t mean you have to give the same exact answer every time.
If you’re speaking to a recruiter who’s not immersed in the hard skills of the team you’d be joining, you might keep your answer more focused on the bigger picture, whereas when you speak to your prospective boss, you might get a little bit more technical. If you’re talking to a C-level executive as part of your final round, it’s probably smart to touch on why you’re drawn to the overall mission of the company they run.
You can also enhance your answer and make it more specific to the role and company based on what you learn as you progress through the interview process, Campos says, such as, “When I talked to so-and-so it really resonated with me that your mission or value is…”
“Tell Me About Yourself” Sample Answer
Here is a snippet from my general response to this interview question:
I currently manage digital analytics for XYZ Company. This includes in-depth analysis on the performance of marketing campaigns, and the user journey through our web products.
I also present monthly insights and actionable recommendations to various stakeholders and Sr. leadership to help them make informed decisions that improve marketing spend/strategy and optimize conversion.
In addition to analysis, I foster the self-service of data through automated dashboards in Adobe Analytics and Tableau. I collaborate with my business partners to define and document data collection requirements and translate those requirements into tagging specifications for the engineering teams. I also perform Quality assurance to ensure the tagging implementations are in line with business requirements.
A project I recently worked on was a performance analysis of marketing campaigns for a site that launched in early 2021. The analysis revealed a higher rate of return when we utilized social media, email and natural search, with low rates of return for paid search. The insights provided allowed the marketing team to change strategy in early 2022, reduce marketing costs by 20%, and achieve their goal of increasing traffic by 10%.
I really enjoy using data to deliver actionable insights that drive results, which is why I’m really excited about this opportunity at X Company. I believe my skills and experience can add value to X Company.
Dos And Don’ts For Answering “Tell Me About Yourself” In An Interview
To recap, here is a list of ways to answer this common interview question as well as items to consider avoiding.
Do
Connect personal strengths to supporting examples.
Quantify your accomplishments where possible
Keep it positive
Keep your response to two minutes or less.
Speak to what sets you apart from other candidates.
Mention past experiences and proven successes.
Align your current job responsibilities to the role.
Highlight your personality.
Connect your skills to the job description.
Briefly mention hobbies, intellectual development and community involvement.
Write down an example answer and practice.
Tailor your response to the audience
Don't
Mention highly personal information such as marital status, children, political or religious affiliations.
List multiple, vague strengths without supporting examples.
Memorize your response.
Summarize your resume word for word. Instead, discuss high points that are relevant to the position.
Rush into conversations regarding what you’re looking for in the role or how the company can benefit you—save such topics for the final stages of the interview process when they are sold on you as a candidate and you have more leverage.
