Tell Me About Yourself: Sample Answers for Software Engineers

You might answer “Tell me about yourself” several times in the same interview loop: once for the recruiter, again for the hiring manager, then for engineers who haven’t met you yet. It’s worth preparing an answer you’ll be comfortable saying each time.

The interviewer has your résumé, so you can skip reading it back to them. Give them a quick picture of what you do now and how it relates to the job. Mention work you’d like to discuss, since it gives them somewhere to go with their next question.

Keep the answer between one and two minutes.

Present, past, future

Start with your current role, what you work on, and one concrete result. Then pick one or two things from earlier in your career that relate to this job. Finish with why you want this role at this company.

Give each part two or three sentences. If a detail doesn’t help the interviewer picture you in the job, cut it.

Sample answers

Use these as a starting point for your own answer. Don’t learn them by heart.

New graduate

“I just finished my CS degree at Ohio State, and most of what I built there was backend work. Last summer I interned at a logistics company and wrote an internal tool so dispatchers could search shipment history. It replaced a spreadsheet that about 40 people were sharing. I was also a TA for the data structures course for two semesters, which did more for my ability to explain things than any class I took. I’m looking for a backend role on a product with real users, and the order processing work your platform team does is the kind of thing I want to learn.”

Mid-level backend engineer

“I’m a backend engineer at a payments company. For the last three years I’ve worked on the service that handles refunds, mostly in Java and Postgres. The biggest thing I did this year was lead the move from a nightly batch to real-time processing, so a refund that used to take a day now takes under a minute. Before that I was at an agency building web apps for clients, which is where I learned to get productive in a new codebase fast. Your team runs at a much bigger scale than mine, and the reliability problems that come with that are what I want to work on next.”

Senior engineer

“I’m a senior engineer at a healthcare software company. I lead a team of five, and we own the scheduling platform. Over the last two years I designed our move from one database to a service per region, and I ran the rollout across 300 clinics with no downtime. These days about half my time goes to design and code review, and the rest is still writing code. Before this I was at two startups, where I got used to shipping with a small team and not much process. I’m looking for a staff role with wider scope, and the platform work in your job description is close to what I’ve been doing.”

After a layoff

“I’m a frontend engineer with six years of experience. Most recently I owned the checkout pages at a retail company. I rebuilt the checkout flow in React, and mobile conversion went up about 8 percent. My team was laid off in March. Since then I’ve been contributing to an open source design system and getting better at accessibility testing. I’m looking for a product-focused frontend role, and your booking flow is a lot like the checkout work I did.”

One sentence on the layoff is enough for the introduction. Then move on to what you’ve been doing and what you’re looking for.

Change two details for every company

Before each interview, read the job description and pick the two requirements that match your experience best. Work both into your answer. If the role wants experience with high-traffic APIs, say how much traffic your service handles. If it mentions mentoring, mention the two engineers you onboarded. The rest of the answer can stay the same from one company to the next.

Where people go wrong

A common mistake is walking through the résumé in order, starting with the first job. It takes too long, and your most relevant work comes last.

A list of technologies doesn’t give them much either. “I use Python, Go, Kafka and Kubernetes” tells the interviewer less than one sentence about something you built with them.

Leave out where you grew up and what you do on weekends unless someone asks. And stop at two minutes. If they want more, they’ll ask for it.

The same question in other words

“Walk me through your résumé” wants the same content in time order, with most of the time spent on your current role. “Tell me about your background” is the same question. “What are you working on right now?” only wants the present part.

Whichever version you get, say your answer out loud with a timer before the interview. Record it once on your phone and listen for where you ramble. Try it again with those parts cut.