Top 3 Ways To Introduce Yourself In An Interview

As human beings, we are often able to speak or write about something that we know about. If we do not know about something, we find it a little difficult to comment on the same. However, have you ever noticed, that when you know too much about a particular thing you find it difficult to speak about it? This is all the way more applicable if you have to do so in a limited word length or within a short time.

Irrespective of the job role that you are applying for (in this context it does not really matter whether you are a fresher or someone with decades of experience), the very first question that an interview panel will ask you would be to introduce yourself.

This question is generally asked to make you comfortable with the setting of the interview. However, in those couple of minutes that you speak about yourself, the interviewer already judges you and rates you on a number of parameters. Thus, it is very important on your part to be able to do justice to this question.

Now, it is obvious that the person you know the most about is you yourself. This makes it all the way more difficult for you to answer this question. Clearly, there are a lot of interesting things that you have known about yourself in the last couple of decades (or longer). Summarising all of that to an answer that should not take up more than a few minutes of the interviewer's time is no child's play.

Further, you would not want your answer to come off as something that is scripted by being too formal about it. To avoid that you may want to include interesting happenings from your life in that introduction. Too much of this may make you come off as someone who is too callous and carefree about their work.

As this is not the impression that you would want a prospective employer to have about you, the best way out would be by knowing when and how to draw the line. This article talks about 3 different ways in which you can introduce yourself in a job interview.

· Method 1

This type of introduction is recommended for freshers who are sitting for job interviews as a part of the campus placement drives. Since this may be the first time that you are facing an interview panel, you may feel a little nervous. However, there is no reason for you to be alarmed if you know how to tackle this first question properly.

Doing so will make you feel comfortable and give you the confidence to ace the interview. You can start off in the conventional manner in which you tell your name and the field that you are specialising in. If the interview is happening in your college premises (and only the students from your college are participating in the same), you do not have to mention the name of your institution.

In any other scenario, you may go ahead and mention the name of your institution. As you are still in college, your prospective employer will not really expect a very high technical skill set from you. If your final year project is relevant in the context of the job that you are applying for, you can go ahead and mention the same. However, if your final year project is something in mechanical engineering and you are applying for a job in IT, you do not really have to bring that up.

· Method 2

In this method, you should be brief and to the point. You can start off by telling your first name. If you are applying to join an MNC or a company that is based in a cosmopolitan environment, do not mention your home town or any other ethnic details. You can directly move on to speaking about your strengths.

Choose one or two qualities of yourself that you consider to be of the highest value to your prospective employer and speak a couple of lines each on both of them. Do not make the mistake of going on a rant about all the qualities that you think you possess. Be brief and speak what is necessary and make sure that you do not mumble any irrelevant details while talking about your strengths.

You will earn brownie points from the interviewer if you can explain how your strengths and qualities can be of use to the organisation. However, make it a point to wrap up the answer to this question within 2 minutes. If needed, you may consider practising the answer to this question beforehand by using a stopwatch.

· Method 3

This introduction is advised for people who have a certain amount of experience and are now looking forward to switching companies or changing job roles. In your case, your first sentence need not be your name. You may go ahead with giving an introduction of who you are professionally. This may be an overview statement giving a sneak peek to your personality as well.

Do not take it for granted that the person interviewing you has already read your resume. This does not mean that you will go about ranting your entire resume while answering this question. You really do not have to talk about what you did in your career 15 years back. Try to make the most of the elevator pitch to highlight only one or two points that you think makes you stand out.

Make sure that you do not use more than 4 sentences for this. Doing so will make you come off as a narcissist. Once that is done and dusted, you can talk about why you are applying for that particular position in the said company. Again make sure that you do not use more than 3 or 4 sentences for this part as well.