Please Introduce Yourself

"Please introduce yourself."

Do you remember the time when you started applying for a job as a fresh graduate? 

I believed most of us must have answered "please introduce yourself." for not just one time in any formal or casual event back in university or school time. Of course, you even can predict this is a mandatory question in the interview session. Those day, when you are applying jobs as a graduate, you usually prepared the answer upfront. You were trying the best to give a proper, simple, and short answer but to make it impactful to attract the interviewer's attention. 

Many of the graduates are wondering why the interviewer seems not to have other questions to ask? Why are they mostly use the "only opening question" to start a conversation for graduates hiring? Isn't it is just a simple question? Why are they asking a question perhaps a 5-year-old kid will know what to answer? Yes, maybe it is a simple question for a kid, but not for me when I was a fresh graduate many years ago! 

I recalled it was in the late afternoon. I was doing nothing but lying on my bed. Suddenly, my phone rang, and I picked up the call immediately. The recruiter who called me, introduced herself and telling me the purpose of the phone conversation. As expected, she asked me to introduce myself. Without thinking much, I told her: "My name is Shirleen; I am a fresh graduate currently staying in my hometown......" I remembered my mind was blank at the time, and I struggled to tell her more about myself.

After a few seconds in silents, she asked, "Okay, anything else you want to tell me......?" 

"......That's all, nothing more......" I answered. 

"You had a journey studied abroad for a few years, do you want to tell me about your university life?" 

"...... I do not know what to tell; I am sorry." 

I was unprepared for the phone interview, and indeed, I should prepare for the expected rejection coming next. An unforgettable history marked the end of my job application painfully with no doubts. I did the phone interview badly on the day. Yes, a 20++ educated lady failed to introduce herself! Why was that being? 

When I became the recruiter focus on graduates hiring sometime later in my career, the play's character changed. I was the one who started the conversation with "Please introduce yourself." when I speak to graduates. There were standard answers, usually expected answers, and sometimes great responses that I have heard from the graduates. 

I thought there was no more exciting intro until a young lady told me, "I am a future-ready GM" in her self-introduction.

My immediate reaction was, "Wow!" and, of course, the opposite inner voice was, "You? Young graduates? Are you kidding me?" 

She continued, "You should have heard that I am silly telling you I want to be a GM when I am the nobody now. However, if I am not telling you like this to catch your attention, would you be continued to listen to me carefully for the rest of the minutes? I had answered calls for my job application a couple of times in the past few weeks. I am exhausted telling you guys I am so and so. But do you care while you are tired too when listening to the same answers given like your other candidates?"  

I kept quiet and let her continued her conversation. 

She said: "I am ambitious for applying for a position in a big organization. I do not want to talk about the CGPA scoring in my degree, which you have seen in the paper. I am sincerely looking forward to the chance to visit your office for an interview. I have my purpose clear now to show I am a determined person. I am not offending, and I know I sounded impolite, I am sorry." 

Then, she started to cry after saying all that to me, and I told her I would call her again to end the phone conversation.  

Right after the call, I felt sorry to hear she was emotional. I did not blame her for being a "nonsense" candidate. I can feel she must be under pressure when always receiving the failures in her job application journey. I started reviewing myself and wondering whether I should continue to ask graduates to introduce themselves moving forward? Am I listening to their introduction sincerely, and what should I expect to hear from them to help me make the shortlisting decision? 

Somehow, I gave her the callback the second day. I told her that her way of catching my attention in our first call works. It is okay if she wants to introduce herself in that way. However, I told her there is always a better way to tell her story. For example, she could have thought profoundly about the principles to make her story fascinating in a positive way. Simultaneously, she should remove the emotions—the idea of avoiding telling the audience how you feel harmful or annoying straightforwardly. Lastly, the most important part should be how we communicate will create an image of how we look in front of people. We surely would not want to leave a wrong impression to the people we first know.

My purpose in sharing her my views was not expecting her to agree with me 100 percent. I want to deliver her a message that we thought we could speak or answer a straightforward question quickly. Still, we forgot the consequences of the answer does not meet the purpose of delivering your thoughts clearly to the audiences. The problems caused ineffectiveness in communication, and it will not help you to achieve your influencing goal. 

Look at the two stories I shared, both she and I ended our conversation with "I am sorry" to the recruiter in the end. We failed to express our thought clearly to tell our story impressively to the audience we first met.

Therefore, when I work for graduate hiring programs, I like to talk to candidates using the "please introduce yourself" to start our conversation. For me, it is never a simple question for graduates who had live for 20+ years but to summarize their personal stories in short and attractive in the first few minutes. Their communication skills weakness will appear if they never prepared the answer. 

Based on my experiences, I will suggest graduates who met the same difficulty as me years ago to practice more before your interview. While you are doing the training, please choose a proper framework by considering who the audience is in your conversation. You can try the exercise by setting the audiences in the role play and beginning to tell the same story from different angles to meet your target audience' needs. Please decide what could be the best resonate details to help people listen to you before you speak. Listen, and hearing is not the same. People will listen to you when they pay attention to the "Wow" factors or the emotional elements in your speech. It would be best if you were careful about how to make the balance when you are speaking. Lastly, please consider the messages to impart; adding in the core inspiration in your life experiences excites you will influence the audiences you want them to feel the same too. 

Believe it or not? I am still practicing my answer to "Please introduce yourself." I am challenging myself with not repeating the same personal experience when we have more stories to tell to different audiences in life. To create your image or how you want people you first met to remember you in the social or business networks, you will always need to choose the most impactful words to introduce yourself. 

To graduates who failed in the interview or phone interview session, please do not give up. No one is perfect, but more practices will make perfect!