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Discussion on: How To Answer The Dreaded "Tell Me About Yourself" Interview Question

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gualtierofr profile image
Gualtiero Frigerio

I'm ok with this questions, while I hate the "tell me about your greatest weakness" that usually follows.

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Andrei Rusu

Yeah, that's a face palm moment. The sheer arrogance that this exhibits it's really bewildering. It's almost an insult.

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Kara Luton

I agree! That’s the one question I definitely don’t like since it doesn’t really tell you anything about a candidate.

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Scott Simontis

It definitely depends on the intentions of the interviewer, but I find that it's a really good question to judge someone's humility. Everyone sucks at something, and being able to admit it without shame is really important in the workplace sometimes. There's a lot of times I will let pride take over and go into overdrive to finish a project when I could have avoided hours of stress, frustration and anxiety by just admitting to my manager that I totally lost track of time this week or getting someone to help review my code.

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Robin Palotai

The stock answer is to take a strength and put it as a weekness, like "Sometimes I have a hard time stopping until the problem is completely solved". If you want to play the game, you should use this. If you just don't care or have confidence otherwise, admit some true weakness (anyone ever does that)?