http://blog.gainlo.co/index.php/2016/10/14/8-secretes-software-engineer-self-introduction/
First of all, your self introduction is a critical part of making a good first impression. You can hardly underestimate how important it is because it affects interviewer’s judgment unconsciously. It’s same as we are inevitably judging people based on their appearances even before talking with them.
What is a good software engineer self introduction?
First and foremost, it must be concise. I’m surprised by how many people ignored this point. Take Google/Facebook interview as an example, interviewers usually expect to spend 5-10min discussing candidate’s background. Having verbose introduction not only will bore interviewers, it makes valuable points in your introduction less likely to be remembered. Keep in mind that self introduction is not presentation, please cut to the point with zero junk information.
In addition, good introduction highlights valuable points in your experience. You don’t need to illustrate all your projects, but things that show your technical/leadership skills should be pointed out. Be clear about which points you’d like to mention and put them into a 5-10min time frame.
Lastly, introduction is not only about the content, but communication. Bad communication skills can make great content boring.
Show your relevance to the job
In essence, self introduction serves two purposes. First, it gives interviewers a general idea of your background – whether you are an experienced engineer, a new grad or a series entrepreneur and so on. More importantly, it provides information about why you are relevant to the job.
Most people ignored the second point and that’s why their introductions have zero useful information. Let me give you an example. Suppose you are applying for a company that is doing a lot of AI and machine learning. A good introduction can be “I’ve been working on data analysis related work for the past 2 years including both infrastructure and algorithms. For example, I’ve improved our ranking system with XYZ metrics. BTW, I’m also taking a bunch of online course about deep learning.”
Obviously, the candidate is not a machine learning expert, however, he’s trying hard to show why he’s relevant. He may also mention that he has done some awesome front-end work, which however is even less impressive than his last point (taking courses).
With that in mind, you are expected to have different introduction to different jobs.
I’m an experienced engineer
If you’ve been working for a couple of years, you might have quite a lot projects to talk about. Then you should really care about conciseness and relevance.
Select projects/experiences carefully and ask yourself why I choose this project to discuss. It might be because the project is technically challenging and shows your leadership skills at the same time. Or it might be because the project is highly relevant to what the new company is doing. All in all, you should be aware of the reason for everything you want to discuss. Otherwise, you are not sure what you are talking about.
Also, it’s important to keep a balance between high level ideas and details, which is a common mistake for experience engineers. Things like “I’ve built the whole infrastructure of our crawling system” is too vague except you came from a well known company like Google, which justifies the complexity. Otherwise, you’d better explain why this point is important (relevant). You may mention that the system has crawled 1B URLs with 20 machines.
However, the opposite extreme is equally bad. Too many technical details can only confuse interviewers. Again, a good criterion is to ask yourself – does this detail provide extra information that significantly shows my relevance and strength? If not, don’t bother to mention it. Another way is to find someone who knows very few about your technical experience, introduce your project and let him tell you what he has remembered. Check whether all important points are covered or any of them is trumped by irrelevant details.
Confidence communication
As we mentioned above, communication skill is also part of the introduction. In an extreme case, you are reading your introduction from a paper, which is terrible even if the content is great.
Be confident about yourself. If you are not confident about your projects, don’t expect anyone else to like it. It’s not something you should pretend to be, but deep inside you should just believe what you have done is important. If projects you prepared are not challenging in your mind, switch to something you are more confident about.
Don’t rush. The point is not to cover as much information as possible. Instead, your job is to make sure that interviewers get the 2-3 points you want to convey. If your content is concise enough, speak slowly and confidently. At the end of the day, what matters is how much information the interview has absorbed rather than you have outputted.
Always prepare. No matter how confident you are, always prepare your introduction before every interview. Prepare specific content for each company/position you are targeting at, prepare every question interviewers may ask, and prepare all the details of everything you’ll mention even they may never be used.
