Starting Your Interview Strong: Key Principles and Common Mistakes

Most people fail the “Tell Me About Yourself” interview question. But it’s totally unnecessary.

Here’s how to start the interview with a bang:

The Key Principles

1. Flip weaknesses into strengths

People are going to be looking at your resume or LinkedIn right before, or while talking, to you. They’re naturally going to see weaknesses. You need to address these like a chess player playing a few moves ahead. Turn them into strengths.

2. Through-line to the specific job

Even though your career has been a zigzag, people want to hire others who have been spent their entire career preparing for this moment. You want to select those experiences in your past that help them tie together a narrative to see how your past would lead you exactly to this job.

3. 2 minutes is the sweet spot

1 minute means you’re not using enough detail to address weaknesses or create a through-line to this job. On other side of the spectrum, 3 minutes or longer is just too long. The interviewer is going to start to feel antsy about the other things they need to accomplish in the interview. Not to mention lose the thread of what you’re saying.

For way more details on each of these, and practical coaching examples of real candidates, check out the deep dive.

Most Common Mistakes

1. Details you don’t remember

People often want to mention flashy projects from their distant past that relate to the current job. But if you don’t remember the details surrounding them, it’s not worth it. Any detail you bring is liable to be a subject of further questioning.

2. Going too long

It’s so easy to just waltz into “Tell Me About Yourself” and tell a chronological story of your past. But people who do this without practice most often go too long. They get caught in tangents and unnecessary details. You should practice so you have a tight narrative that is succinct and concise.

3. Hard to follow narrative

It’s easy to want to pack in every detail and flip every weakness. But if it’s not in an easy to follow three point structure or some logical narrative, then people will lose you. And they’ll forget most of what you said, instead of have those memorable points you were hoping to deliver.

4. Lacking metrics

Every job these days is about making impact to the numbers. Even if it was pre-PMF, an internal tool, or a platform, you have to cite some numbers. You need to quantify your impact. Maybe it’s in terms of API calls, maybe it’s user satisfaction. But, ideally, it’s input and output metrics.

5. Not enough PM work

It’s so easy to get caught up in metrics and big initiatives. But citing marketing or sales wins isn’t worth your time. You have to talk about features, and how you drove the specific success behind those features.

6. Lack specifics you did

It’s very easy, when trying to be concise, to brush over your contributions. But you need to not just talk situation and metrics, but also the actions you took to drive those metrics. Don’t brush over your work.

And, above all, practice, practice, practice.

You know they’re going to ask this one!