How to Master "Tell Me About Yourself" in 7 Minutes

0:00Here's a secret nobody tells you. Interviewers form their opinion of you in the first 30 seconds. And the very first question they ask in interviews is tell me about yourself. You show me a pay stub for $72,000 on it. I quit my job right now and I work for you. If you can't nail this question, you spend the rest of the interview digging yourself out of a hole.

0:19If you do nail it though, the interviewer spends the next 30 minutes trying to confirm their positive impression. And today, I'm going to tell you how to control that first impression. If you're new here, my name is Ben and I'm a former JPMorgan investment banker who led JPM's UC Berkeley recruiting efforts for two years. And so I've interviewed over 50 candidates and helped

0:39over 100 break into investment banking and other competitive industries like consulting. Today, I'll be sharing the three crucial components to answering, tell me about yourself that most people just plainly don't know about and check out the very end of this video if you want an example of a great answer to this question. With that, let's jump in. All great Tell Me About Yourself answers have the three same components, a clear motivation,

1:03a credible narrative, and a memorable hook. Whenever I coach students on this question, I like to start with motivation because that is the North Star that sets the foundation of your narrative and hook. The way you demonstrate a strong, clear motivation is by showing that you've done thorough research on the industry you're recruiting for and know the types of people and skills the industry highly values. The key question you should be asking yourself,

1:28is what does this industry require out of its A players? How would I describe myself? Three words. Hardworking, alpha male, jackhammer.

1:42Merciless, insatiable. Let's use investment banking as an example, since that's my area of expertise. Bankers value, reliability, since you're working in a high-paced environment with tight deadlines, and everyone needs to carry their weight like a well-coached football team. being great with numbers since financial modeling is a core skill, and a great work ethic since you'll be working 70 to 100 hour weeks. After having these values pinpointed, you can then interweave them throughout your narrative and hook

2:10that will leave the interviewer with a sense that you have a strong, clear motivation for joining the industry. So let's talk about building a credible narrative. The goal with your narrative is to make it as impenetrable as possible so that it leaves no doubt in your interviewer's mind that you have the motivation. background and skills to succeed in the industry. This is where a lot of brainstorming and reflection is going to be required, and I highly recommend going through your entire life and writing down all the key pivotal moments

2:39and experiences you've had to start sketching out your narrative. This should allow you to create a skeleton for your credible narrative, and let's continue with our previous example of building an answer for investment banking. Your narrative could start with first investing in the stock market in high school, which sparked your interest in finance.

2:56which then led to majoring in business administration at NYU and joining the student investment fund. Then to gain experience in finance, you joined a small private wealth management firm freshman summer, but realized you wanted something more technical, and so landed an in-semester boutique banking internship and realized that banking was the best way for you to start your career in finance. As you can see from this example, it's super logical and immediately makes it clear that you not only are motivated to join banking, but actually have a solid track record that makes you make you make you make you make sure that you make sure that you're not only are motivated to join banking,

3:26you a credible candidate. Now, you may ask, what if I don't have a super straight line narrative? Well, then, in order to be a top candidate, you really need to start making moves ASAP to make your narrative as credible as possible with the limited time that you have. This means take online courses independently, join a relevant student org, listen to podcasts and read newsletters, apply for internships to build experience ASAP, and do whatever else you can possibly think of to make your narrative stronger. If you don't have time to do any of this, because your next interview is next week, then you need to identify two to three transferable skills

4:01from your existing experiences that are related to the skills your industry values. For example, maybe you're a CS major and interviewing for tech banking, then you can focus on the fact that even though you had a late interest in finance, your background in tech will allow you to understand tech companies at a much deeper level, and that given the technical and math foundations required in CS, you've been able to successfully build complex,

4:26financial models on your own for potential investments. So now you understand motivation and narrative. Let's next talk about making sure you have a memorable hook, which is something I see a lot of students leave out and it's a huge opportunity lost. Most answers just go straight into schooling and experiences, making your answer super dry,

4:47bland, and boring. Just as how any great movie starts with a strong opening scene, the hook allows you to grab your interviewer's attention by providing unique and aspects of your background that they can remember you by. The key with your hook, though, is that it must also be relevant to your industry's values. And let's go through three examples of great hooks I've heard in the past. As a reminder from our previous example, investment banks value reliability, being good with numbers,

5:13and a strong work ethic. And you'll see how these values are the foundations for the hooks we're going to discuss. The first example was one student who built an e-commerce shoe company, which was the foundation for his interests in business. But what he found most interesting was building out projections and models, which is what led him to finance.

5:30The second example was a D3 athlete who had a major injury in college and wanted to channel his competitive drive to something else in his career. And after doing some research, landed on investment banking because math has always been his favorite subject. The third example was a student who grew up from a single parent household and has been supporting himself since high school through part-time jobs.

5:51And during one of his jobs as a waiter, he discovered he loved analyzing. the restaurant's weekly sales and helping his manager decide inventory levels, sparking his interest in business and finance. As you can hopefully see from these examples, you can start to build a picture of how these three candidates can be seen as people who match banking's values of being reliable,

6:12good with numbers, and having a strong work ethic. Hopefully, you can also see how much stronger your tell-me-about-yourself answer would be with a hook like these, versus if they were completely left out in an answer. Bringing everything together, once you have your memorable hook, you want to have that as the start of your credible narrative and the spark that led you to the experiences that showcase your interest in the industry you're recruiting for, and by interweaving the skills, the industry values,

6:38you will end your answer with a clear motivation. Here's an example of a great answer that incorporates all three components that we've been discussing, and since it's quite long, I'll just let you pause the video to read through it. So there you have it. That's how you build an amazing, tell me about yourself, answer and get your interview off to the right start. If this video was helpful to you and you're interested in receiving one-to-one coaching to get guidance like this as you aim to break into investment banking, feel free to check out my mentorship program, the banking accelerator, which I'll link to in the description below. While you're down there, you can also sign up for

7:12my free newsletter series where I provide a ton of great advice for general career tips and banking recruiting. This was actually my first video about answering behavioral questions. So let me know if you guys more of these and if there are any questions in particular you struggle with most. With that said thank you so much as always for watching and hope to catch you in the next one.