Ever been in a interview and got asked “Tell me a little about yourself” and your mind goes blank?
Ya, we’ve all been there. To be fair, it’s a good questions for them to learn more about yourself but also how you present yourself. How prepared are you for interview?
Before we delve into this, I want to mention that my pitch has always worked in my favour and I have gotten great feedback from interviewers about how impressed they were with my self introduction.
Here’s an example of a pitch (more like answer) that’s not good, unprepared
Uhm, I have a bachelor in Physics, and uhm, I uhm, I worked on a project using Python.
There’s too many “uhm”s. It takes away from the sentence and the actual answer.
So what should a good pitch have? Beside full sentences, the following:
– One sentence about who you are, and your experience
– Two-three sentences about your background. If no industry background, add academic only.
– Two-three sentences about your work experience (projects from school or industry experience)
– One-two sentences about what are you looking for in your next role.
– One sentence about your goal in the next 3-5 years
Let’s see an example of a pitch. The background story is:
– bachelor in applied mathematics from university A
– no industry experience
– one python project, one R project
– research thesis was on topic A.
Company info:
– company name K
– position: data analyst
This would be my pitch for this company:
Hi, my name is Romina, and I am a recent graduate from University A with a degree of Bachelor in A.
I started with a bachelor degree in A, where I focused on research topic A. My thesis was on the expansion of the universe where I used Python to determine the age of the universe. I also used R in a group project that focused on getting data from questionnaires. My contribution to the group project was cleaning and analyzing data for the students in another program. During this time I also worked on an internship at company M, and took extra classes in programming.
In my next role I am looking for a Data Analyst position, fulltime contract where I can grow and expand my current skillset. I am looking to do more Python projects and be part of a great and inclusive team.
My goal is to be a senior data analyst in the next 3 years and then a data analytics manager.
So let’s break it down.
The first sentence gives a brief background information.
The next paragraph focuses on academia education, and project experience. Notice this does not have a separate section about work (industry) experience.
The last sentence mentions future goals and expectations.
Instead of “Hello, my name is ” you can also start with “Hi, thank you for connecting with me today”
Download the template from here: