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4 common “Tell Me about Yourself” interview questions and

answers
1. A brief summary of your personal details: You have to give your name, where you are from
and a brief review of your resume. You may also provide any other personal detail that you
choose to provide.
2. Education: You should tell the interviewer about your educational qualifications and any
relevant miscellaneous educational qualifications that you might have amassed.
3. Professional experience: Standard questions during a job interview are “tell me about your
professional experience”. Depending on whether you are a novice or an experienced
professional, you should share your previous job experiences. If you are a novice, then, you
could tell anything that you think would be relevant for the job. You may provide a scope of
your educational capabilities and strengths or any of your hobbies, etc.
4. What are Your weaknesses and strengths: One of the tricky interview questions that you
might be asked is “tell me about your weaknesses and/or strengths”. Therefore, you should
prepare for such questions. A common mistake is to take strength and present it as a weakness.
You should be honest. You may share one-two of your weaknesses and the way you have
(successfully) corrected or handled these weaknesses. On the other hand, do not boast your
strengths. Tell about some of your strengths as having a positive impact on your professional
capabilities.
5 tips for “Tell Me about Yourself” interview answers
Try to be as clear, precise and frank as possible. When interviewing and answering “tell me
about yourself” questions, you should avoid common mistakes and stick to the facts as follows:
1. Keep the information crisp and relevant: One of the first things to remember is to keep the
information crisp and relevant. Try to speak in short sentences and moreover, try to give them as
much information as possible in the least amount of time. Here is a brief idea of what you would
be saying, refer to: How to Describe Yourself in an Interview.
2. Do not repeat information from the CV: You should ascertain that none of the information
that you provide about yourself is repeated or duplicated from your curriculum vitae. Therefore,
even your curriculum vitae should only contain the necessary and relevant information, while all
other miscellaneous information should be disclosed during the ‘tell me about yourself’ answers.
3. Fabricated or false information: Another important thing that you should remember is that
you should not give any fabricated or false information while answering the Tell Me about
Yourself Interview question. Background checks today have become very important and strict.
Companies are known to sack people even after years of working, simply on the basis of some
false information provided to them during the initial interview.
4. Irrelevant and unnecessary information: It is very important that no irrelevant and
unnecessary information is given out during the question. The question seems to be quite simple,
but it is actually one of those make or break questions, from which an interviewee can never
recover and hence loses the job opportunity.
5. Facts and figures: While telling about yourself, be prepared to be asked further questions
about any facts and figures that you have provided. For example, if you have said that you have a
Bachelor’s degree, make sure that you carry a copy of the same. Any information given without
the relevant proof may be deemed suspicious and ambiguous.
6. Do Not Tell them about: You should not disclose too much information . You might tell the
interviewer that your hobby is fishing, but telling about your last fishing trip in which you
missed a big fish would be too much information, unless the interviewer is a big fishing fan and
actually goads you into telling the details. Also, you should not give them too much information
about your family members. Of course, you would have to inform them about the number of
family members that you have, and whether they work or not, and if yes, where, those kinds of
details, but telling them a

Examples of Strengths and Weaknesses| List

of Strengths and Weaknesses
Posted on June 10th, 2009 in Frequently asked Interview Questions & Answers, Weaknesses
AND Strengths

In brief: “Before diving into this issue again, I would like to point out that many experienced
interviewers will try to avoid these questions, because questions about strength and weaknesses
immediately keep a person on the defensive and takes the interview into a negative atmosphere.
However, if the interviewer does ask you about your strengths and weaknesses, you may need to
have some intelligent answers that will not seem boastful or phony.”
To be on the safer side, for your job interview preparations -
this article provides examples on how to answer the question “what are your weaknesses and
strengths?”.
This is the third article of the weaknesses and strengths question series.
You may also read – How to answer the weakness and strength question.
Job Interview: Strength Examples – List of Strengths
Here are some aspects (with detailed explanation) that you may put forward as being your
strengths:
Learning agility and effective personal communication skills
Most researches show that the single best predictor for who will perform well and succeed in a
new job is the one who possesses learning agility(a quick learner) and the one who can adjust
himself/herself to changes and new situations, such as a new workplace.
Also, effective interpersonal communication skill is one of the best personal traits.
Past performance or even experience, skills and intelligence are not as important as learning
agility and communications skills. HR and recruiters are aware to these facts…
Self Motivated and Determined
To achieve success, one needs to be self motivated and determined to succeed. Without self
motivation, it is quite possible that even the best of employees will languish in the company
without achieving any success.
Success Oriented and Natural Leader
All companies search for an individual who has the drive within himself or herself. Frankly, the
company would not have time to actually sit back and look out which of their employees has that
next big idea, or which of the employees is not working according to their talents and resources.
Therefore, it is best that a company have a self appointed mentor who keeps these things in mind
and speaks about them at the appropriate time.
This characteristic is necessary for team leaders, supervisors, executive managers and project
managers.
Team Player
No man is an island. And in today’s world, like never before, a person requires a group of people
with whom to succeed. Therefore, being a team player in today’s world is almost as important as
any academic degree.
Hardworking
This is one of the most common traits found in a successful boss as well as a successful
employee. It is said that success is ninety percent hard work and ten percent thinking/brain
activity. Any company would like to have a hard working employee. Therefore, you can speak
about hard-work, dedication and commitment as your strengths.
Intelligence and Self Confidence
Being intelligent does not mean being the only person in the room who can drive a plane, but a
person who has the simple logic and practical knowledge that goes with running a proper team.
Job Interview: What Are Your Weaknesses – Examples &
List of Weaknesses
Several interviewers will also ask whether you have any weaknesses. When it comes to
weaknesses, make sure that you describe the weaknesses that are ambiguous enough to be
converted into strengths.
Here are some of the weaknesses that are generally discussed.
Getting Nervous around people
Today, with the advent of the new work culture where a person seldom meets another and where
the only time people speak to each other is during coffee breaks, there are some people who have
become introverts. This causes some people to become nervous about giving presentations and
speeches.
Being a Debater
Some individuals are too passionate about work and require a reason for any change that is
introduced in the company. Though this is good for the project and the product, it might rub
some people the wrong way.
Going out of one’s Way
There are several people in organizations all over the world who take all kinds of work from
their colleagues, whether it is their work or not. While these people are an asset to the company,
they may create antagonism.
Lack of some skills
No person has all the requisite skills for the job profile. This is one of the greatest disadvantages
that one has, because once a person starts earning, they find it difficult to go back to their
learning ways.
Remember that these are just concepts and you should back up each of these strengths and
weaknesses with an example.
Some other strengths & weaknesses (per job title) to consider:
Here is an additional strengths and weaknesses list -
Strengths –
Leaders and managers: Ability to prioritize, planning skills, well organized, multitasking and
assuming responsibilities and duties. Possessing the capacity to cope with failures and trying to
learn from past mistakes.
Customer care, Call center and sales: Communication skills, patience, having good
interpersonal skills.
Programmers and R&D: A quick learner who enjoys learning new things. A team player who
shares knowledge and ideas with colleagues.
Weakness –
Sensitive person: Taking things to heart and getting too disappointed when things are done in
the wrong way.
Too helpful: Crossing limits while helping teammates.
Summary
An interview is the short span of time spent with each other, in which a person has to decide
whether the employee is perfect for the job or not. To establish this, the interviewer asks several
questions.
Some of the questions are quite simple and can be answered immediately, while some are not as
simple and require some thought before the answer is given. One good example of this is the
question regarding strengths and weaknesses.
Back to job interview questions and answers.