Campus life is the most enthralling period of a student’s life; however, it usually ends with an event that makes your palms sweat – ‘campus interviews’.

Now, I know that you must have prepared for your interview very hard; you must have parsed a myriad of websites, and have mugged up the answer to every interview question given on those websites. However, you are still confused about the right way to handle that first interview question – “Tell me about you.” Now, most websites would have advised you to:

– not to talk about your personal things like, parents, hobbies etc.

– talk about your latest education or experience only

– mention all your achievements, best scores, positive character traits, awards, and accolades to mark the first positive impression

And they were all correct. Ideally, that’s how you must answer this question.

But you scored only 60% marks in your exams; you don’t have any awards, medals, achievements or accomplishments credited to your name; you were not an outstanding student all your life. In short, you had nothing else to include in this answer, except, “I am an engineer from XYZ College (or whatever course you were into).”

Assume that you are appearing for a testing profile in HCL (just an example). Several days before the interview date, you were given the interview schedule, profile details, and company information. First thing that you must do is ‘Research’ – research about the profile, company, prospects etc. Let’s see if you can answer ‘Tell me about you’ now.

I am an engineering graduate from XYZ College, and I have a great interest towards building up my career in testing profile. The reason for my interest in testing is the enormous technical skill it helps to develop along with providing great prospects. Indian ITES companies have the best of the testing projects with largest global market share, especially HCL. That’s another reason because of which, I am really looking forward to start my career with an organization like, HCL. I have read a lot about both manual and automated testing. However, I understand that I will need ‘on-the-job-training’ to gain an expertise in this subject, something that HCL is well-known for. Through this interview, I would further like to explore how HCL and I can contribute towards mutual growth.

If you notice, in this answer, candidate actually spoke in context of his professional interest and ambitions only. Moreover, he informed the interviewer that he was intelligent, interested, and thoroughly prepared.

The best part was that the candidate took the lead in this discussion, because now, recruiter won’t ask about percentages or awards. Questions that interviewer was bound to ask next, were;

“What do you know about HCL, and how do you think you can help the organization?”;

“Can you explain, how testing profile can boost your career?”

To answer these questions, you must research, thoroughly

Good Luck!

Vaibhav Gupta

Interview Questions Answers