"Tell me about yourself".
This is the first item I ask of interview candidates, and I'm suprised at how often it completely catches them by suprise or how they don't know how to answer the question. I've gotten responses from "what do you mean" to an entire detailed work history.
It is a tough question, but I think candidates have to know how to answer it. It's their 60-second chance to tell me what's important and relevant about their personality and their professional work history. It forces the candidate to have their thoughts organized and to be concise. Unfortunately most of the time their response results in train wreck of technical project details.
I don't expect a response that's perfect, but I'm looking to hear the candidate tell me about:
- Professional interests. e.g. hard-core programmer, .Net development, WinFX/WPF, Ajax, Agile Development, and Perl.
- Personality traits. e.g. enjoy working with people, have fun at work while being professional, refuse to work with end users.
- Work history. e.g. I was a Code Monkey and developed a Widget and a Thingamabob at Acme. I led a team of developers at Intertrode and successfully rolled out 4 large web apps.
- A few personal things. e.g. camping, hiking, playing drums, and watching kung fu
This topic in an interview isn't a make-or-break item, but it sets the stage for the rest of the interview. It gives the candidate a chance to shine and to let me know that they're serious about wanting to talk with me, about wanting the job, and that they've put some thought into what they want to tell me.