How to Answer "So, Tell me about yourself."

Perhaps the most common, yet most difficult, interview question is "tell me about yourself." When faced with this question, many job seekers don't know where to start or how much to divulge.

Greg Rollett from the Orlando Employment Guide joins us on the Emurse blog for this guest post on the subject!"So, Tell Me About Yourself."

So your resume got you through the door. Good stuff. Glad to hear it, really.

Now that you are at the door, are you prepared to answer the question that takes most people down before they start? The question that is so relatively simple, yet vague and scary that it can single handily make or break your interview:

"So, Mr. (or Mrs.) Potential Employee, Tell me about yourself."

Most interviewees go into the elevator pitch, 30 second sell or whatever hot term that basically describes yourself in less time than it takes to watch a super bowl commercial. This isn't a bad route. The problem lies within the context of how you pitch yourself.

Yes, you want to be confident, strong and truthful. Talk about your career experiences and past employment. Most importantly and probably most overlooked is the fact that you want to sell yourself on the company. How can you help them out? What skills, background and experience do you have that the employer can utilize to better their organization?

Here are 5 quick tips to answering the all important interview question (statement) Tell Me About Yourself:

1. Be honest. They have your resume with contact information right in front of them and they will be calling on your references. Oh, and most employers can call a bluff (it's called counter questioning).
2. Keep it short and relevant. Find your best qualities and skills and limit it to what is important to the company that you are interviewing with. There is no need to talk about the process of TV repair when interviewing for a Marketing position. Think elevator pitch.
3. Practice. Do not go into the interview blind. More often than not, you have some time between the contact and the first meeting. Practice in front of a mirror, with a friend or even a family member. (I'm sure they want you to succeed and stop mooching out of their fridge.)
4. Research. When talking about yourself, blend in the company's information to show that you have done your part in the research. The internet poses as a great resource for company information.
5. Eye contact. This keeps both you and the interviewer honest and shows that you want his attention and that he in turn keeps attention to your most important details.

I hope this sheds some light into the all important first step once you have polished your resume enough to get in the door. Remember, an interview is your chance to really sell yourself both visually and verbally. Keep the focus on the company and be confident in yourself and your skill set and you'll be collecting a nice paycheck in no time.

Greg Rollett is the Social Media Specialist at the Orlando Employment Guide and is the author of the Orlando JobSpot and Tampa JobSpot. Please visit his blogs to read more about the job seeking process in the Central Florida area