As with your medical school interview several years ago—or any job interview you’ve ever faced—you’re all but guaranteed to receive the classic “tell me about yourself” question during residency interviews.
The residency interview tell me about yourself question is your chance to steer the direction of the interview the way you want. What do you want the interviewer to know about you beyond your scholastic accomplishments? What aspects of your life and personality do you feel comfortable, confident, and excited speaking about in greater depth?
We break down the nature of the tell me about yourself question, what interviewers are looking for, and how to best prepare for it.
Residency Interview Tell Me About Yourself Question
The broadness of this question remains understandably intimidating. Where do you start? Of course, you’ve been here before, so you can rest assured that the interviewer is not asking you to explain every detail of your life story. They’re also not asking you to rehash your personal statement or summarize your application. They’ve seen your credentials. That’s why you’re sitting there in front of them.
The interviewer wants to know more about you—the person behind the accomplishments. What personal details will give insight into who you are? What’s fueling your desire to become a doctor? Why is your chosen specialty the one for you? Do you have a notable hobby or passion outside of medicine that’s important to you?
The interviewer is interested in what you choose to highlight. How do you define yourself? This is your chance to kick off the interview and lightly guide what happens next. That’s why it’s such a crucial question to get right.
How to Answer the Tell Me About Yourself Question
1 | The Question Is an Opportunity
The broad nature of the “tell me about yourself” question is a major asset, as it allows you to set the tone and lead the direction of the interview. What do you want the interviewer to know about you that you did not have room to express in your ERAS application? Which of your best qualities or which revealing anecdotes do you want the interviewer to ask you more about?
This is why it’s vital to prepare answers to common interview questions before your interview. You can develop a multi-layered answer that contains a few different interesting facts about yourself that you can speak about confidently and comfortably. It won’t matter which thread the interviewer chooses to pull on because you’ve placed each thread strategically.
The tell me about yourself question is a tremendous opportunity to guide the interview in the way you want. Keep things general and make sure any personal details you share emphasize your strengths with concrete examples.
2 | Succinctly Share Who You Are
The danger with the tell me about yourself question is sharing too much. The last thing you want to do is ramble on and on about every extracurricular you participated in during medical school or the lessons your first dog taught you. Save the details for your memoirs. Keep your answer succinct.
Start with a few simple facts about who you are and where you come from. Where were you born, and where did you grow up? What is your family like, and are you close? What was your major in college? What do you do for fun? Why are you excited to join the program? Is there an interesting experience you can highlight that exemplifies your personal strengths, integrity, or ethical decision making?
For example:
“My name is _____ and I grew up in _____. My father was a _____ and my mother was a _____. Growing up, (insert life-changing event that led to medicine here). I went to college at _____ where I was exposed to _____. This experience had a major impact on me and inspired me to pursue (insert chosen specialty.) In my free time, I like to _____ (insert interesting hobbies or extracurricular activities). These experiences are why I am so excited to be a part of this program…”
Remember to only share things you’re comfortable speaking about in greater depth. While you won’t know exactly where the conversation will go, any path it could take is one you will be prepared for.
3 | Set the Tone with Your Body Language
We communicate an incredible amount of information without speaking a word through our body language. Whether it’s through your posture, the gestures you use, or your tone of voice, your interviewer will form an impression of you the moment you want through the door (or appear on screen in the case of a virtual interview).
If you walk in slouching and looking at your shoes instead of making eye contact, your interviewer will still ask you to tell them about yourself, but they won’t be interested because they’ll already know who you are—someone who will crack under the pressure of residency’s long hours and challenges.
Don’t allow this to happen. Enter your interview with intention. Stand up straight. Keep your chest broad, your shoulders back, and your chin up. And don’t forget to smile! Show your interviewer you’re excited to be there from the very beginning.
But effective body language doesn’t just happen. It takes practice. Even if you rocked your med school interviews, that was four years ago. The best communicators still slouch and get tongue-tied if they don’t take the time to practice and warm up. You need to brush up on effective body language and practice, practice, practice.
Before your interview, practice nodding your head, smiling, and maintaining eye contact with the person you’re speaking with. These are all nonverbal cues that you are actively engaged with the other person in the conversation. Seek feedback from mentors and other people you trust. How do you come off? Are you too timid or too cocky? What can you do to convey confidence and enthusiasm without overdoing it or appearing inauthentic?
Effective body language will continue to serve you when working with patients in residency and in your future career as a physician. The sooner you invest time in improving your nonverbal communication, the better.
Learn How to Improve Your Interview Body Language.
4 | Practice, but Don’t Memorize
While developing a foundational response to the “tell me about yourself” question is essential, do not write your answer out word for word and memorize it like a script.
Reciting an answer you’ve rehearsed in exactly the same way will make you sound robotic and inauthentic. Plus, if the interviewer asks a follow up question you didn’t anticipate or takes the conversation in a direction you didn’t prepare for, it could trip you up and leave you like a deer in headlights.
Instead, create a general plan with talking points you know you want to hit, and then practice hitting those points again and again. How can you consistently steer the conversation in the direction you want it to go?
Practice is what will guarantee interview success, not memorization. Practice answering in front of a mirror, in front of trusted friends and family, record yourself and watch it back, and participate in mock interviews conducted by physicians with residency admissions committee experience. This will give yourself an accurate sense of how the interview will play out.
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What makes our course so valuable is the unlimited feedback you’ll receive as you prepare. Mock interviews are charged by the hour, but with our course, you’ll access immediate and unlimited personalized evaluation of your answers.
With unlimited AI mock interviews, you can hone and perfect your answer to the “tell me about yourself” prompt as well as other common questions and not-so-common questions that could surprise you on interview day.
Receive real-time feedback on not only the content of what you say but how you say it as well, including your body language, filler words, speak/listen ratio, and more. You can even interact with our AI coach, Indigo, who will help guide you on the specific ways you can improve through one-on-one dialogue.
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You’ll have dozens of years of residency admission committee experience on your side. Our team of top doctors, all with residency adcom experience, came together to build this course from the ground up to provide you with the ultimate resource to master the residency interview.
