“So tell me about yourself.”  It sounds like an innocuous thing for someone to ask you, but in the high stakes world of getting a job, it’s as loaded as a gun. And it’s pointed at your head. In response, you must be prepared to smile and charm your way through your 90-second wrap-up of your 25-year career. Coaches will spend as many hours as you like honing that 90-second answer. You must have a 30-second one as well, purposely for use in elevators and thusly called your “elevator speech.” Personally, I can’t imagine pitching for a job in an elevator, but evidently it is done (as it is also on your child’s soccer field or in church). I was afforded the use of a recruiting center after leaving Bear Stearns – kind of like school for the newly unemployed. Most of us had never had to look for work and were frighteningly without job search skills. Many of us went on interviews anyway, figuring, how hard can this be? And we came back shivering wrecks. I heard stories of trading floor rock stars having a panic attack trying to answer, “So tell me about yourself.”  I myself once launched into a frenzied attempt to describe my career, and I believe scared the fellow half to death. The interview went on for 90 minutes only because I think the interviewer was too afraid to end it. Had I been him, I might have entered the witness protection program without delay, but he was nice enough to send me a thank you note.  If writing about yourself is the hardest task you’ve ever faced and you’d rather pay your taxes, get someone else to write your story. And here’s a tip – pretend you’re talking about someone else that you really like.  You’ll sell better.

The other thing about “tell me about yourself” that I just learned from a really good corporate coach is that it actually has much less to do with your 90-second content than you getting the person you are talking with to like you.  Initially, I met this idea with a huge amount of skepticism.  But when I really thought about it, I held a fairly senior post and hired a lot of people over the years.  Naturally I needed to know if the person had the actual qualifications I was looking for, but the really critical factor was determining if the person was going to be a good fit for my team. Would their personality add to what we have or rub someone the wrong way?  If you’ve ever managed a team, you know that one wrong person in a 50-person team can create havoc and send you into HR hell for months while you sort it out. And today, panel interviews are popular.  I learned to do panel interviews with my department heads. I knew it was hard on the candidate, but we all had to like this person and they had to fit into our largely deadline-driven days.  So, remember in a single interview or a panel interview, your job is to establish your likeability factor. You’ll need to do your homework about who you are meeting, because interview styles are many and varied and you’ll need to respond instantly to the style temperature in the room. Most importantly, in a panel interview, even though there may be several persons in the room at one time, always address yourself directly to the person talking to you. Do not try to entertain the whole room. This means that three people are checking you out when you’re talking to the fourth person, but hey, it’s your chance let them see how you operate – that you can operate. My favorite coach always says there is only one thing you need to achieve with your interviews – and that is to get an offer.