Tell me about yourself - How to sell yourself, but keep it concise?

Everyone talks about the importance of your "Story" to answer the multiple variations of the "Tell me about yourself" question you will get asked in every interview. I am pretty conflicted on how to answer this, as some people will say this part of the interview is a gift and your time to completely sell yourself, but some will say its important to keep it as short as possible and leave out the detail so the interviewer doesn't get tired of listening to you talk. I personally don't see how these can be achieved simultaneously.

Is it more important to completely sell yourself, or keep it short?

21 Comments
 
"TheQuizzicalOne" I'd think they'd be interested in learning about how many beverages you can consume in the amount of time the interview takes.

Sounds like a lot of talk. Best practice is to bring in a handle of Jack and show them how much you can consume before one word is spoken.

Believe me, when you slam that empty bottle down there will be only one word to describe the interview.

Unforgettable.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Must be less than 1 minute. Must tell your story -- high-level, but answering the why.

Include personal detail:

I grew up in blahh blah city, and in HS I loved soccer and math. At Princeton, I continued my pursuit of math, but became more intrigued with finance, because (short non-econ answer)... so I joined the stock brokers club...

You get the idea. Don't go into much detail, but include the flow, so people can see the story between the line items on your resume. Always include where you're from - people love helping people who have a shared background, and the strength of this bond increases with the rarity of the location. So even if you're from Iowa, the one person in the firm who's in the same class as the person interviewing most likely will want to help you even more.

 
Best Response

Print a business card with a URL to your personal website and advise the interviewer that if they have further questions they should refer to the online website and use the resources there. They can follow up with your manager in the "Contact" page as well, should they have any additional inquiries.

 

I'm definitely going to ask this if I ever interview people just to hear the bs they say.

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

In my opinion this is the most important interview question, especially for SA positions where in reality you probably don't know anything and, provided you have read the guides for technicals, there isn't much to differentiate you from the next candidate. Being able to answer this question well is important for a few reasons:

1.) It shows you understand what investment banking is at a deep enough level to connect your past experiences to leading you to pursue a career in the industry 2.) More than other questions, this allows me to get a better sense of who you are as a person based on the things you did in the past AND the way you present them in your response 3.) Most likely this will be the first question you get in an interview - having a strong answer will shape my opinion of you positively and affect the rest of the interview. On the other hand, having a weak answer will make me more skeptical and more likely to ask difficult questions in the remainder of the interview

 

The answer to that question will be different for every person who asks it. People tend to be complex,and no one needs to know everything about you. Think about the person who is asking and what I'm age you want them to have of you. You might want a girl to think that you are smart,fun,and popular,but you want your future boss to see you as a team player and hard-worker. Keep it simple and to the point. Talking too much makes you look both insecure and insincere.

look at here more in detail: http://careerfunda.info/career-guidance-tell-me-about-yourself/</a">**How To Answer Tell Me About Yourself In A Job Interview **

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How is USC OCR for TMT and Asset Management? I know they usually have Goldman but am curious as to which divisions? I think ER is pretty cool and actually within my connections on linkedin there are more that have ER experience than boutique summer analysts. No clue as to why.

 

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