In today's lesson, I'm going to talk to you about different ways to answer everybody's favorite part of an interview and that's sarcasm obviously.

I'm referring to the dreaded question: Tell me about yourself.

And you don't just find this question in interviews.

You might be asked to offer a self introduction in a meeting at a conference in so many different situations.

Let's tackle it today.

Before I share all of my wisdom on how to master this question,

I would like to remind you that as always, there's a free PDF that goes with today's lesson and it contains everything that we're going to discuss today.

Lots more information.

So you can really plan a perfect self introduction plus a quiz for you to check your understanding.

If you'd like to download that, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box.

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Ok, let's get on with the lesson.

So tell me about yourself is one of the first questions or prompts that you'll be asked in a job interview.

How you answer this question is really important because what comes out of your mouth is going to be the first impression that the interviewer has of you and first impressions are extremely difficult to change.

Unfortunately, this question is a tough one to answer.

Go ahead.

Give it a think.

What would you say if I asked you to tell me about yourself?

So does the interviewer want to hear about your childhood and what it was like to grow up with three brothers, seven dogs and an obsession with Britney Spears?

Or do they want a very detailed point by point rundown of your CV?

Which one did you go for?

Well, in all honesty, neither of these is a good approach.

So what do you say?

Well, don't worry, I'm going to tell you exactly how to answer this question.

And I'll also highlight some phrases you can use to really sell yourself first things first.

The most important thing to focus on is work not your personal life.

If you're answering this question in a professional environment, I know it might be tempting to try to impress the interviewer with an extravagant story about your life, but hold on to those fascinating anecdotes till after you have the job, what you should do is give the interviewer a brief overview of your employment experience and talk about the roles you've done in the past that relate to the job you're applying for.

And the key word here is brief, just hit the highlights.

Treat it as a synopsis or the blurb at the back of the story book of your life.

You want to get the interviewer interested, but you're not going to feel the full story just yet.

If most of your work experience is in jobs similar to the one that you're applying for, start at the beginning.

Tell them your job title, the company you worked for and what you did there.

Let's imagine you work in hr human resources.

You could say my first job in the field was as an hr assistant with go work a large company in Manchester.

My main duties were to support the managers with recruitment and assist with money staff engagement.

After two years, I was promoted to hr manager with the same company.

I led a team of three in that role and I was responsible for ensuring we hit our recruitment targets.

You can continue talking about your positions until you reach your most recent one.

Now, let's imagine that you're applying for a role of a senior teacher.

In this case, you've only worked as a teacher for two years and you had a different career before that you should start with the most relevant position for the past two years.

I've been teaching business studies at the local high school.

During that time, I've taken ownership of the two most senior classes and their exam preparation.

I was drawn to teaching because I've always loved working with young people and I have a great rapport with them.

But that was a career change for me.

I began my career in marketing and I worked my way up to senior marketing director over the span of 10 years.

I feel that I have excelled in my role as a business studies teacher.

Thanks to my real world experience in marketing, combined with my passion for teaching.

Remember if you're a new graduate and you're looking for your first real job, you don't need to talk about your paid work.

Reflect on your journey through school, university, part time jobs and even volunteer work.

Show off the gems that showcase your awesomeness.

Additionally, for each job or experience you mentioned, you should talk about one major achievement that you had there, focus on achievements that are relevant to the role you're applying for and be specific.

If you can, can you see a theme here, make it relevant.

You could talk about your hard skills or hard achievements.

And these are things like learning a new programming language or knowing how to operate a forklift.

But you can also talk about your soft skills and soft achievements.

And these things are harder to measure but might involve using your communication skills or solving a problem.

Let's look at some examples.

One of my major accomplishments was implementing a new accounting system that saved the company approximately 70 hours a month or something that I'm most proud of is that I was able to learn to use a new software program and then teach my team to use it too.

Or even my greatest achievement in the past year was beating the sales target by 14% despite the difficult economic situation.

OK?

To finish off your answer, you should talk about the job you're applying for and how your skills or experience relate to it.

It's that relevance.

Again, this is your opportunity to really knock the socks off your potential employer by showing them exactly why you are the only person for the role they're trying to fill.

Here are two examples.

The job post said that you're looking for someone with strong sales skills.

My past achievements in not only meeting but exceeding sales targets mean that I'm sure I would be a valuable asset to the company.

I did some research on the company before coming to the interview and I know that you value dynamic employees who make decisions quickly.

I've had a lot of experience with that as I've worked in a fast moving tech startup.

Now let's look at a full answer to this question.

This person me is doing a job interview for the role of office manager.

And the interviewer has just said, tell me about yourself.

Here's my answer.

I've been working as an administrative assistant for 2.5 years.

My first job in the field was with Shire Housing and my main responsibilities were organizing and updating housing records for the local area.

One of my greatest accomplishments was implementing an Excel model to automate updates to the database.

This saved a lot of time each month after a year, I moved to Barksdale Housing a private company where I've been working as a senior administrative assistant.

I oversee the records management there and I look after a team of two, I'm proud of the development of my leadership skills during that time.

And I'm thankful for the support of my current employer who helped with this.

I understand from the job post that you need someone who could update your existing records management and help lead a team of four through the changes.

I'm sure that with my experience and creativity, I will be able to make positive changes for you.

What do you think?

Personally?

I would give myself the job, wouldn't you?

Ok.

Now I have a homework task for you.

Firstly, I want you to think of your dream job position.

Then I want you to follow the structure.

I've just taught you and answer the, tell me about yourself question, it can be realistic or it can be a version of yourself.

In the future that you would like to one day become write it in the comment section.

I would love to take a look.

Downloading the PDF will really help you with that task and with practicing for future interviews, just click on the link in the description box to download that, right.

That's it for this lesson.

I hope you feel more confident about that.

Dreaded.

Tell me about yourself interview question in English.

Now, don't forget if you would really like to learn English with me.

I have launched my B one B two and C 13 month English programs and I'm very biased but they are awesome if you would like to check them out and see if they're the right fit for you.

Visit English with Lucy dot com.

I will see you soon for another lesson.

Bye.