Walk me through your resume vs. tell me about your self?

Hi there,

Honestly they're about the same!

Walk me through your resume is going to be a little bit more “formal” and professional based. It would specifically highlight each experience. Tell me about yourself can have some personal aspects, and would be a bit more “flexible” in terms of covering every role on your resume.

That said, I honestly treat both answers as essentially the same (and prepare just 1 response for both…modifying based on the “energy” or personality of the interviewer).

Hello,

As Ian pointed out, they are quite similar, so definitely feel free to approach them in the same way. 

You can also approach “walk me through your resume” more chronologically/logically, and “tell me about yourself” as more topic-based, if you prefer. So “walk me through your resume” will depend on what stage of your career you are at, but typically what makes most sense is to go in chronological order and highlight most important experiences, or focus on most important experiences from the get-go. For “tell me about yourself”, you could instead say things like “I am very passionate about topic X”, then mention two points from your resume that are testament to that; “I have a lot of experience in Y”, and then mention the resume points that relate to that, and so on.

Hey there,

You can basically approach them in the same way.

• Start top-down why you are sitting in the interview today (''I have applied at Firm X for 3-4 reasons'')
• Then highlight 3-4 relevant experiences that led you to the decision to work in consulting and specifically in Firm X
• Highlight the specific skills in each experience and how it would tie to consulting 
• Does not all need to be professional experiences btw, show something outside of work too

Cheers,

Florian

They are similar, but my preference is to treat tell me about yourself as an ‘elevator pitch’. An elevator pitch is a 1-2 min pitch about yourself which allows you to focus on the key things you want to highlight including things that may not be on your resume. For example - If you are talking about an internship, instead of talking about the title and duration you can give a 20 second overview of a cool thing you accomplished! Here, it is better to talk about how something you worked on was presented to the board of directors vs going over all the responsibilities you had as an intern.

Walk me through your resume is typically more of a chronological resume walkthrough.

Best,

Udayan