Summarising yourself during the interview

Recently, a Dubai based general manager contacted me to take a quick crash course coaching on cracking the interviews. He had an interesting tale. Raman freezes when the most dreaded question is asked in interviews. "So, tell me about yourself." Raman was perplexed when he was asked this usual seemingly regular question. "What do I respond to this? My life story? My childhood? Recent job? And I cannot keep going on and on. Right?" A few weeks later, I was at IIM Raipur to conduct a very similar workshop on " Managing self in the corporate world." In one of the role plays, a student kept narrating his tiny-tales of life. So much so, that I had to intervene and ask about the length of his response. Sudhir was even more perplexed. He feels that it is an obligation to respond at length when someone asks about you. "What do I do ma'am.?" Sudhir was standing clueless and bit embarrassed.

The situation is similar to many corporate strategy meetings. The head of the department or at times, of the organisation, keeps a rule. Each member of the meeting has to contribute. One of my clients did narrate a horror story. The head of the department made a rule that each person has to speak, no matter what the content is, in the "Growth hacks of this year" meeting. They were supposed to make pointers about these. After a while, the entire board room was a war cry. Each one brought out a reason to debate but there was hardly any solution. The grievances came out rolling and most of the time, it was baseless too.

I often see this tricky situation in my communication and strategy making workshops and personal sessions. Most people actually do communicate without a point. Points are not facts or notions. They are your thought process with a clear basis of what needs or could be done. Are you making that kind of points in your interview? So how do you respond to this million-dollar, so to say, kind of question?

Don't narrate your CV: You have got an interview call. And now you are sitting in front of an interview panel, responding to their questions. Do you think, they read your CV before sending that call letter and reading it right now as they speak to you? They absolutely did. So do not repeat that story again. Michel Watkins writes in his book "First 90 days" that neither talking about your obsession with music is going to impress, nor reading your bio like a book could. A fabulous research paper at Harvard Business School mentions that imagine your interviewer making a movie on your present upcoming role. They are running the script in their head as what your role would look like or how you can handle people and so on and so forth.

Read that role: Now remember, they are making a movie and you are in for an audition. For that, you need to highlight what you are good at and what they need. Look closely at the job description. The areas mentioned as, "Must have" are expected to be your core strengths. Do you have it in you? A word of caution here, do not misfit or force-fit yourself in the job description. The major reason for many rejections in the interview process lies in here. A misfit information about you is clearly visible in the question-answer session. Make sure of preparing yourself for the audition of strengths that will match the role.

Know your destination: One common mistake that I see is most people do not take enough information about the organisation they are applying. So, how would they fit in the organisation if not the exact role? I personally have recruited people who did fit the organisation so we crafted a role to match them.

Telling about yourself is a summarisation of your career so far. Make sure the picture is clear with the perfect blend of colors. Sometimes, even if the shades are not so bright, the clarity overcomes every flaw.

The writer is a strategic advisor and premium educator with Harvard Business Publishing