#JustStart your Goals
The goal:
I will have a mock interview with my friend once a month and will conduct a proxy interview with myself every two weeks. I will also watch videos to improve myself in interviews and will work on the question, “tell us about yourself”. I will work on myself so that I am ready for the mock interviews at Amal. I strive to ace them by overcoming my weaknesses.
Why this goal:
I went for this goal because due to my anxiety, I tend to short sell my self. I hate the question,” tell us about yourself”. I go completely numb. I don’t know what to say apart from “ my name is Umme Hania”.
Storytime:
Not long ago, just few months back, I went for an interview where they asked me what is outsourcing, to which I replied I don’t know, we haven’t studied yet. Nothing extra ordinary; not problematic, right!
Now let me tell you the background story. The interview was one week after my exams. Right now, I am in my 6th semester and this is the story that occurred after the final exam of my fifth semester. In my 5th semester, we studied supply chain in which one of the topic was “outsourcing” -_- and cherry on the top, one week before the interview I studied all about it, all over again, for my exams, so you know now that it was fresh in my mind :( But at the interview, I got so paranoid that all that came out of mouth was, Idon’t know. We haven’t been taught of it yet.
Additional piece of information: I studied all of in my O/ A levels too. -_-
I am otherwise a very confident girl who isn’t afraid to speak her mind but I don't know why I am so paranoid by interviews. Actually not interview but with the question “tell us about yourself”. In the interview that I mentioned above, all was fine till they asked me that question and then you know the rest.
I don’t know why I can’t answer this question. I become confused and conscious about myself. I feel like I have nothing extra ordinary to tell which is why Iam unable to say anything at all.
The 3 tasks:
So, to overcome this anxiety of this particular question and prepare myself for future interviews, I have decided to assign myself 3 task over the course of 3 weeks. Right now, I’ll update you on how the first task is going. I’ll update you on the rest as the week goes by :))
- Preparing and Answering for the most asked questions: TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF
- Have a proxy interview with myself by recording myself and answering interview based questions
- Ask a friend to take my mock interview by the end of the 3rd week
WEEK 1: Preparing and Answering for the most asked questions: TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF
So obviously, I faced lots of difficulty answering this question even to myself coz I found nothing that was worth mentioning at first. Later, I sat down and explored myself which led me to some interesting facts about me, one of which I will share here coz this is something that helped me calm my nerves
okay so this particular thing was identified by my friend. The thing is that when I talk about my pet cat, Cookie, it tends to calm my nerves and helps me open up about myself coz Cookie is like a child to me and he is one of my most vulnerable part. Therefore, I decided to incorporate the mention of my cat when telling about myself.
Mini Story
How my friend identified this is an interesting story. So I was discussing with my friend about my anxiety to answer the particular question and was asking her to help me out. As she knows me very well, she identified that Cookie is my comfort zone. I was aware of it sub consciously but she made me realize it consciously.
When I applied for college and also to where i am currently worked, I talked about my cat. It so happened that both the places, one of my interviewees were a cat person and I happened to mention my future goal of starting my own café and helping strays which led to the mention of Cookie, which led to me feeling comfortable, which led to me confident and expressive about myself, which lead me to impress the interviewers, which led to me being accepted in the end!
