Use F.I.T. to answer “Tell me about yourself”

- This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - We're talking about your, your latest, the job closer, time saving techniques for acing resumes, interviews, negotiations, and more. I'm tempting to dig to jump right into the particulars, but maybe if you could kick us off with an inspiring story who used some of these approaches, and had some transformative results. - Honestly, I see this on a daily basis during my busy season and on a weekly basis, but it's every time I see somebody embrace the fit model for answering "Tell me about yourself." I think historically, we've all been bludgeoned with this concept of selling yourself. And what I'll see is, my job seekers will come in to do a mock interview, and you'll ask them, "Tell me about yourself?" And you'll warm up any interview with a small talk. They'll, "How's your day going so far?" "Where are you from?" "Oh, I was up late watching the basketball game. Did you catch it?" And then they'll say, "Tell me about yourself." Signaling the interview's about to start. And people will go from that fun person who has hobbies, directly into the robot who is like, "Okay, I've got the next two minutes memorized completely word for word." All the goodwill and rapport that you built during the first three minutes of small talk is suddenly wiped out. Now I'm uncomfortable. You're a completely different person. And that's how I see so many of my job seekers that I start to work with. But when they embrace this FIT model, which FIT, F-I-T, F is for your favorite part, I is for the insight that you gained, and T is for the transition you made. And it's just a, a pattern, a lather, rinse, repeat pattern that you take through each stage of your career. So my favorite part about being a chemical engineer, was breaking difficult problems down in smaller pieces. But, the insight that I had, was that I wanted to apply that rigorous logic to a wider variety of challenges. So upon graduation, I made the transition into strategy consulting. So, the nice thing about that is it's completely authentic. You're just saying what your favorite part was. The funny thing about saying the word favorite though, it's so powerful because I can give you three statements. Only one is true. Can you guess which one? I really enjoy cleaning the toilet. I am passionate about cleaning the toilet. My favorite chore is cleaning the toilet. Only one of those is true. Which one is it? For me, it is absolutely my favorite chore, because minimal time investment, maximum impact of cleanliness. But to say I, I enjoy cleaning the toilet, that's a lie. To say I'm passionate about cleaning the toilet, that's definitely a lie. So I can say something is my favorite, have it be absolute, an absolutely true statement so it's authentic, deliver a neutral energy, which is accurate, and not lose the goodwill of my interviewer who thinks I'm lying to them. But I see so many people, it's actually a safer statement than saying that you're passionate about something, to say that something's your favorite and you don't laundry list that way. So it focuses attention. But when I see people, like the light switch goes off and they actually try FIT, and for each promotion that they've had through their career, or each stage of their life, they go from this memorized robot into a person who's just helping you catch up on their life like you would help a long lost uncle you never knew you had, catch up on your life, being authentic, and real, and meaningful, and seeing that light bulb go off never gets old for me. - And so that FIT model sounds perfect for "Tell me about yourself," because you're telling them about yourself, and in a professional context, and why are we here. Which is kind of sometimes the subtext really of "Tell me about yourself." So is that FIT model primarily for that question, or for a broader array of questions? - It's to a job seeker's advantage to treat, "Tell me about yourself," or walk me through your resume in identical fashion. I consider those to be identical, simply because the job seeker, it, you want to provide novel content. And where people go wrong with "Tell me about yourself." or "Walk me through your resume," is they do what I call it, "The transcript." Where they basically read their resume out loud to you. - I know that I read this (chuckling) - Yeah. It doesn't add value. You're just saying these words out loud that they've hopefully already glanced at but probably haven't. Either way, it's not interesting. It doesn't help me get to know you any better. The why, why you did what you did, why you made the career change when you made that, that's not in your resume, and that's far more interesting. It makes you a stickier candidate in terms of memorability. So getting away from what you did, and more into why you did what you did, that's really helpful.