abhishek.sardana wrote:
"Walk me through your profile" vs "Tell me about yourself".
Rhyme according to your answer to "Tell me about Yourself", I think these 2 questions would have different answers. The answer to "Walk me through your profile" would concentrate mainly on your resume and the answer to the other question would go as per your suggestions and would be more personal.
Am I right?
By profile, I assume you mean "resume"... No one asks you to walk you through the profile... ("Check it out, I got 4000 posts, and a kick arse avatar")
The short answer is maybe - *I* would probably approach those two differently. Walk me through your resume is really asking "What have you done, and why have you done it, and why are you here today?"... But... heres the thing.... its just how I might do it - that doesn't mean its the
right answer. -- More importantly, I might not do it the same way twice. This is what I meant about trying to think of questions as a network that you can traverse..
Imagine a mesh of questions and answers, each interlinked by different lines. There are a hundred paths to each answer and hundreds of paths to each quesiton. Multiple answers link to multiple questions. Something like this:
http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/anm/summersch ... _big01.jpg
With that picture in mind, try to develop answers that work that way - there are many ways to get to X and many ways to get to Y, and X and Y can both be reached in different ways...
In general... I'd say not to think of these questions so rigidly. Walk me through your resume does not have to be "X then Y then Z then this and now this".. Similarly "Discuss Yourself" does not have to be all about extracurriculars. Thats just how
I might go about answering it....
You should get as comfortable as possible casting thoughts together.. You sound like you might be trying to "define" answers - and I'd urge you not to. Otherwise if someone says to you "So, what are you doing here today?" you'll find yourself struggling -- "Oh no! Is that more like "Tell me about yourself" or is that more like "Discuss Yourself" or maybe its more like "Walk me through your resume".... Oh no! Which answer do I give?" Then you wont be sure which answer to give and you'll waste time worrying about which one is the "right" one that you prepared for - and which one isn't... (when in fact, either is acceptable).
In other words, try to avoid tying answer X with question Y explicitly. Practice being comfortable with the idea of a mesh. There are multiple ways to answer questions and multiple questions that lead to answers. Usually, all that you need is some transitional sentences and thoughts to link things together. That doesn't mean you should actually draw out the question answer mesh....(thats just creating more explicit links) it just means you should conceptualize the idea and practice until it comes naturally.
When you can think of two or three different ways to answer a given question, you are thinking mesh.
The other reason its important to get accustomed to this is that it isn't uncommon to get asked X, you answer Y and then get asked some variation of X (Say X*) .... you can't answer Y again... you need to able to somehow link X* to something else - maybe Z. Or maybe, later on you get asked question A -- to which you were hoping to answer B -- but you already "used up" the B story answering another question altogether. If you get used to the idea that no question has a right or wrong answer - and you practice giving different answers to different questions in different ways - you'll never find yourself "trapped" like this...
I'm repeating myself, so I'll stop... you get the idea.
08 Nov 2007, 07:10
(flexes muscles) 
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