But there is one question that you can expect in every job interview: "Walk me through your resume." It usually appears at the beginning (after the initial icebreakers), before any of the tougher behavioral questions, before any technical ones, often even before anyone has asked you a single question about your CV. And yet, it stumbles more candidates than almost any other question in the interview.
One thing that contributes to the problem is that it also feels way too open. It is one of those questions that does not have an obvious right answer, and it also has no boundary for what should be included or omitted; as a result most people either freeze, ramble through their whole life history or simply read their résumé out loud line-by-line. All of those approaches do not work well, and I promise the interviewer knows in 15 seconds which bucket you fit into.
The silver lining is that this question type is contrived and therefore one of the easiest to prep for. You know it's coming. You can prepare an answer ahead of time, practice it so it comes out sounding natural and not rehearsed, and have one less thing to worry about when you walk in the room.
Why Interviewers Ask This Question
A hiring manager will not ask "tell me about yourself" because he/she has not taken a look at your resume. In most occasions, they have it open in front of them. What they're actually doing is using this question to warm you up or gauge your communication skills before diving into technicalities.
It also says a lot to them in a short period of time. How you articulate your response indicates if you can structure thoughts under mild pressure. Your additions tell them what you find relevant to the role. And it is your voice, whether commanding, jittery, rambling, or too cool for school, that plays the music throughout the rest of the interview.
Put differently, this question is pulling more than its weight. It's not a throwaway icebreaker. It's often the moment an interviewer make their first real judgement about you.
What Not to Do
Understand what consistently doesn't work before getting into what does
The most prevalent error is to begin with your childhood or very first job and continue through your career history in chronological order. This is painful to hear and by the time you get to your relevant recent (unless obviously your story in 2022) experience, the interviewer has forgotten about it.
The next biggest mistake is to read your resume verbatim. If the interviewer already holds your resume in front of them, it simply brings useless redundancy. They want to hear you speak about your experience in your own voice with context and personality that cannot be expressed through a bulleted list.
Then there's the converse problem: answer too personal. Tearing down your hobbies, family details, or mundane life story may seem like a strategy to come across as likable, but it only takes up your already-low supply of time without moving the conversation ahead. Put the personal color later in the interview, when you have a chance to hear more about what fits.
Last but not least, never choose answers with no structure at all. Through the ramble of one thought to another with no clear beginning, middle and end, not only is it difficult for the interviewer to follow along, but it can also be perceived as a lack of self-awareness at all for your own career story.
A Simple Structure That Works
One of the most certain techniques to structure your answer is the Present, Past, Future format. It is more simpler, easy to practice, keeps your answers relevant without it sounding too scripted.
Existing: Begin with your current situation. What is your current role, and one not a few things in it you are currently working or do recently?
