How to answer “introduce yourself” on HireVue

Introduction

While HireVue video interviews are an interesting innovation in the recruitment landscape, the questions asked are decidedly traditional.

Getting asked to “introduce yourself” (or similarly, “tell me about yourself”) is one of many questions from traditional interviews that has made it’s way into on-demand interview platforms like HireVue, VidCruiter and Spark Hire.

This question is used as an icebreaker on interviews for all sorts of jobs and job levels.

How to answer the question

The first thing you should do is to resist the temptation to read off your resume or CV. This is a classic mistake that even seasoned job applicants do.

If your video gets reviewed by a person, they will most likely have your CV in front of them, so listing off all the information already on your CV is pointless.

There are two objectives you want to accomplish when answering this question:

Objective one: Help the interviewer place you

Give the interviewer a “sound bite” of yourself and your career that helps them place you.

Understand that the interviewer might have tens - if not hundreds - of videos to process, so helping your interviewer do their job is an excellent way to get ahead of the competition. The best way to do that is to summarize your career in a one liner.

For example:

I’m a sell side M&A analyst that specializes in consumer durable goods. Right now I’m working on improving my programming skills to automate some of my work.

With that statement, the interviewer has a near instant and clear understanding of what the applicant is about, and can quickly decide if they are relevant or not to the vacancy at hand.

Objective two: Be memorable

Add something memorable about yourself - especially if your field is highly commoditized.

For example:

I’m also using those programming skills to hack together an automated fish food dispenser for my aquarium!

As someone who’s worked with recruitment, believe me when I say it helps a lot to be memorable in your interviews. At a consensus meeting, that second example above will help all involved to rapidly identify you (maybe even as “the fish guy!”). If everyone can remember who you are, you are more than halfway towards landing that job.

Make sure you practice your answers in an environment that is as similar to HireVue’s as possible. Use a platform like Voomer to hone your answers and get AI powered feedback on your answers.

The (sort of) exception

Sometimes, this question will be phrased in a slightly deceiving way: “walk me through your resume”.

This question asks you directly for what is on your resume and therefore, you have to answer the question or else you’ll risk being dropped for not following instructions.