Tell Me About Yourself – Best Answer for Director & VP Interviews

If you are going for these high-level director, VP, C-level jobs, you better have an incredible answer to the question, tell me about yourself. And I have exactly the formula for you. Because once you are interviewing at the director level and above, there are fewer jobs available. Even the smallest mistake can take you out of the running. Big mistake. Big. Huge. However, you are in good hands because I've helped thousands of senior-level professionals ace their interviews when the stakes are high. And you're next, chief. And stay to the end because I'll give you a a full example that you can use as your blueprint for future answers. Here's how you play chess with this question when the rest of your competition is playing Chutes and Ladders. Understand a few things. The only reason someone asks you, tell me about yourself, is if they didn't properly prepare for this interview. So in this moment, they are looking to be led by you. You need to lead them to know what is important about you, and that will shape their questions in the interview. Okay, so that's crucial. That means you need to give them a specific summary that only tells them the things that they need to understand for you to do this job. Yet so many senior level professionals have autobiography syndrome where they tell their entire career story and they think that that is somehow helpful and impressive. Which brings us to the second point, which is that, you know, as you climb into the big leagues of an organization, the checks may get bigger, the hours often get longer, but the communication gets Short. Concise is key. You are not praised for sharing lots of information. You're praised for communicating only the most relevant information in as short and a clear way as possible. Learn your rules, you better learn your rules. If you don't, you'll be eaten in your sleep. So your answer to this needs to be 2 minutes, maybe 3 minutes if it's really that good. I know what you're thinking, that is super short. I have done so much in my career. Nuh-uh. Walk in, brother. They don't actually care about your past. They care about what you can do for them in the future. So you need to show that you are a concise, clear communicator. So let me show you the 3-step framework, and I'll also include an example. I'll also link a worksheet that will go along with this video so that you don't have to take notes. You can grab that below for free. Step 1, your professional identity. You lead with who you are both by title and with a summarizing accomplishment statement. So this helps the interviewer to confirm, okay, good, we're talking to someone who knows our world. Say something like, I'm a sales leader who has built teams and driven go-to-market strategy in the B2B SaaS space focused on companies scaling from $50 million to $500 million in revenue. Let's say you also have medical device sales experience too, but you're interviewing for a B2B SaaS company. Should you talk about that too since you did that for 6 years after all? No! Get it together, Captain. Focus only on what's relevant. I see you, you're creeping into autobiography syndrome over there. Okay, so implicitly you're telling them, I understand the landscape. I've operated at this scale. I know what problems you're solving. Step 2, your highlight reel. I want you to go in reverse chronological order of your past jobs and pull out Allow a summarizing accomplishment statement for each of your past roles. Not necessarily your biggest accomplishment per se, but your most relevant accomplishment. You can even follow this 3-part formula. 1, name a major challenge or opportunity you inherited. 2, say what you did to transform it, such as their hiring, the process, the strategy, whatever. And 3, say the big result that follows. So an example would be, at my most recent role, I inherited the sales org with 40% turnover, and within 18 months I rebuilt the leadership team, implemented a new compensation structure and grew the pipeline by $200 million while dropping attrition to 12%. Notice what's in there. You diagnose a problem, you took decisive action, built a team, and delivered results. That's what directors and VPs do. So do that for your past 3 roles or so. And after that, say, and before that, I had various roles in sales, including at this company and that company. You don't have to name the companies or even the role. If those titles aren't relevant to the company you're going for. I hope this is coming through loud and clear. I will repeat it for clarity. If you're interviewing at a SaaS company and way early in your career you worked at say cosmetic companies, they don't care about those companies really that much. Unless it's a super big name where you can mention that you learned best practices there or something, but not much. Step 3, why this role you're interviewing for is the best next move. Here's where you show strategic thinking. You're not just excited about the company, you're showing that you understand the specific challenges and how your expertise maps to them. Don't say something generic here about why you wanna join the company saying things like, I love your mission, or you have a great culture. That is a junior level answer. Instead, you want to look at the job description and consider what legitimately interests you about the role. So if you've spoken with other people on the team, what did they say that made you feel that you could do well in this job. My clients usually land over 50% of their interviews inbound from recruiters finding them because of the way we help them to optimize their online presence. An answer that a lot of my clients say is something like, well, when Lindsay reached out about the VP of Sales role, what stood out to me was your expansion into the enterprise market. And I've taken 3 companies through that transition from mid-market playbooks to enterprise sales cycles, procurement complexity, all of that. It's my favorite work that I've done, and I'd love to do it again. All right, let's dive into a full example. Also, In the comments, leave what profession you're in. What is that target job title? Because I will then use those job titles for future examples. Also, isn't it fun to see who's tuning in? What are the other professions in the comments, right? Okay, here's an example. I'm a finance leader focused on financial planning and forecasting in growth stage companies. In my current role as director of FP&A, I've managed a planning function for a company that scaled from $90 million to $250 million in revenue over 3 years. I led the end-to-end budgeting cycles, built forecast models that reduced variance by 18% and partnered closely with product and sales leadership to align our capital investments with the strategy. So I did a lot of translating complex financial models into actionable insights for these non-financial executives. Before that, I spent several years in corporate finance where I streamlined our month-end close process, cutting it from 15 days to 8, and built a team responsible for variance analysis and board-level financial presentations. And then earlier in my career, I held several analyst roles. And then what drew me to this VP of Finance role at your company is after speaking with Chelsea on your team, she explained your recent funding and the direction you're heading in. And this is a phase where forecasting and strategic capital allocation will be a big focus. And that's exactly the work I've loved doing. You've got this! Wi-Fi high five!