Can I urge you though to make sure, never to ask about, or
never to really say this to a candidate, tell me about yourself.
I think that is such an old standby that a lot of interviewers use.
But I really encourage you.
And I'm going to change my color to red.
Do not ask this question.
It is not a great question for a few reasons.
But the biggest being, that a candidate is really at this point open to say anything.
So remember, we want structured interview questions that are standardized and
are asking from one candidate to the next the same questions.
We're really trying to gauge job competencies and things like that.
Well tell me about yourself, just opens up a whole can of worms I call it.
Candidates can say anything at this point.
I've had candidates in the past where I say, tell me about yourself.
I did use this early on in my career.
And they would say things like well, I'm 50 years old,
I'm divorced I had a candidate once say, I have depression, and
you feel for these people because obviously I'm not going to make
a hiring decision based on whether or not someone has depression, but someone might.
Some manager will.
And so it's not a great question at all to put out there.
That's why I like to start off in a different light.
What do you know about our company, I also tell the candidate, walk me through
your resume, how does it link to the position, those kinds of things.
Much better than 'tell me about yourself'.
The last thing I should say, that I kind of put in this bucket are really some
favorite go-to questions, and I'm going to talk about that next.
But one of those would be, for instance, tell me about your five-year goals,
where do you see yourself?
Those kinds of things.
So, let's take a look at some of my favorite questions.