Tell me about yourself in 3 minutes

One of my side jobs in Amazon is doing interviews. It is a great way to learn about people and oneself. Interviewing others has a mirroring effect: you see yourself in candidates’ stories: “how would I have done it? How would I respond to that question?” When you identify a bar raising behavior in candidates’ narratives, or sometimes not so good data points, psychologically you are applying empathy: “understanding another person's experience by imagining oneself in that other person's situation.” I always ask the same question as the ice breaker in interviews: “tell me about yourself in three minutes”. I even told candidates I had read their resumes and understood they had long successful careers, but I wanted to hear them summarizing the highlights. I was alway amazed by the variety of the answers. Some candidates would start from their high school years, how they got their very first computer, the excitement of the occasions - even though that was more than 30 years ago. Some candidates would start from 15 years ago when they started working, giving me a chronological timeline of every single job they had worked. Some candidates would start from what they do now, but quickly browsed through it, then went to the job they worked on 10 years ago, and the colleges they attended. I understand some folks attended prestigious colleges, but if that was more than 10 years ago, is that still the highest achievement of your life? In three minutes, what I really want to know is: “What makes you stand out, at this moment, for this job?” So don’t focus on your school. If it is one of the prestigious schools, the interviewers noticed that in your resume already. Don’t tell your story chronologically. Three minutes are not enough for your autobiography. Start with what you do now, or at least recently in the last x years. Try to focus on things relevant to the job, unless there are non job related things that make you one of a kind. For example, don’t tell me you like hiking, tell me you climbed Mount XXX last year. If that was Mount Everest, whoa, you got my attention. If you are fresh out of school, don’t tell me the courses you’ve taken over the four years and you got an A in calculus. Tell me what you have done, not being asked: the website you created, the mobile app you wrote, the GitHub open source project you are involved… Three minutes is short, purposely short. I want to know how you perceive yourself: the things that make you unique, stand out, your passion. And why you are the best for this job :-)