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How to answer "Tell me about yourself"
This usually opens the interview, and it isn't a request for your life story. It's a chance to give a short, relevant pitch for why you fit this job.
Why interviewers ask it
It relaxes the conversation and shows how you summarise yourself. Interviewers also use it to choose what to ask next, so what you mention steers the rest of the interview.
How to structure your answer
- Present: what you do now, in one sentence.
- Past: one or two experiences that prepared you for this role.
- Result: one achievement, with a number if you have one.
- Future: why this role is the next step.
Example answers
With experience
I'm a platform engineer at a payments company, where I run about 40 services on Kubernetes. Before that I was on call for a card API, which taught me to care about reliability. Last year I moved our deployments to GitOps, which took release time from 40 minutes to six. I'm looking for a bigger platform challenge, and that's why this role caught my eye.
First job
I've just finished a degree in computer science, where my final project was a small app that helps students share notes. About 200 people on my course used it, which taught me a lot about listening to feedback. I want to start my career on a team that ships real products, and I liked what I read about how yours works.
These are made-up examples to show the structure. Use your own experience and real numbers.
What to avoid
- Reading out your CV from the start.
- Going over two minutes.
- Personal details that don't relate to the job.
- Ending without saying why you're here.
Practise this out loud
Run a mock interview for common interview questions. Questions change every time, you answer by voice or typing, and each answer gets a score with feedback.