A pessimistic optimist's job search journey

A classic interview question.

In the past few days I watched quite a number of youtube videos on how to answer this question. Bottomline: the interviewer doesn’t want to know everything about you. Rather, this question is like an icebreaker, setting the tone for the rest of the conversation.

I took most of the advices, trying to condense years of living, working experience in two-three minutes hoping that whatever I am going to say will relate to the person sitting opposite to me. Start with the current experience, then go back about experience in the past, then talk about the future.

Then I talked to my husband – who in my opinion is a great story teller. With his story he had convinced investors to give him $4.5M; that was 10 years ago. He gave me a complete different advice. Again, his principle when it comes to story telling is simple: be yourself. To quote him: be authentic, be like a child. you know why people like kids? Because they are themselves.

So I came up with two versions: one version is the recruiter-prepped, with skills and experiences packed in a two, three-minute answer. Another version is slighter longer, less focus on professional skills but probably more authentic. I will lay out these options and ask my interviewer which version they would like to hear. Unless I am so nervous that I completely forget to ask and don’t even remember any of the two versions.

Watching too many youtube videos emphasizes how competitive it is out there; and the more time I spend watching the more I feel defeated. I feel stressed thinking I, my career, my life, working experience will be “judged” based on just these 2-3 minutes.

But then I also try to think from the recruiter’s perspective, they receive hundreds of applications, you’re lucky if they give them full attention throughout these three minutes.

The job search keeps going.