So Tell Me About Yourself . Or the Art of Not Messing Up an Interview

As someone of the older, more well-seasoned kind, I’ve had many interviews in my life. Some good. Some terrible. Some for jobs, some for appraisals, some for medical reviews, and some for employment matters. No matter the context, one question always seems to open the conversation:

“Can you tell me about yourself?”

It’s astonishing how such a simple question can trigger such a visceral reaction. Perhaps because I am many things, far more than one answer could ever hold.

I am my parents’ daughter: the fruit of their marriage and the only child who grew up with no real option but to succeed.

I am a wife: loved deeply by a husband who stands beside me through everything, including the emotional thunderstorms of perimenopause. A companion. A confidant. A team.

I am a mother: to children who range from adulthood to teenage years to early childhood. I am their home, their comfort, their safe place.

I am a curious mind: painted in many colours, creative, musical, imaginative, and endlessly in awe of the world.

I am empathy itself: moved by the suffering of others and compelled to ease it where I can.

I am devoted: to peace, to kindness, and to the wellbeing of the people I love.

I am a fighter for justice: someone who believes that fairness is worth standing up for, even when the world feels slow to listen.

I am my community: shaped by women supporting women, lifting each other, reminding one another of our strength.

I am grateful: for the chance to dream of a future where I can make even a small difference.

And yet, when that interview question lands, the version of me that wants to speak is not the version they expect. They want the concise professional summary. The short academic profile. The neat, digestible biography.

All the richness of who I am is trimmed into something formal, polished, and painfully limited.

“I am what I represent and what I have achieved academically.”

But that answer cuts me so very short.

Perhaps that is why the question overwhelms me, not because I don’t know who I am, but because I know too well, and the real answer won’t fit into that tiny professional box.