Sample Interview Questions and Answers: Tell Me About Yourself – Wendy’s Answer

(Who is Wendy? Wendy – Executive and recent Chief Operating Officer seeking Controller position)

Terry: Wendy, we were very impressed by your credentials.  They’ve asked me to call you and take you through a couple of questions to get to know you a little bit better.  The first question is, tell me about yourself.

Wendy: I think you’ve had an opportunity to look at my resume.  I’ve have had a very, what I would call, traditional start to my career.  I spent the first eight years in public accounting working for XXX.

When I left them as a senior manager I moved into a corporate role for a client of mine, which was XXX  in XXX. I had several successful progressive positions there starting out in financial planning analysis, moving into a controller role.

Ultimately, I ended up in their international operations where I served as a CFO for what I would say was a precursor for what today’s is considered shared services.

We provided services to all of the manufacturing operations across the world in terms of helping with the accounting as well as providing a venue for product sourcing and capital expenditures across the world.  Then I had the opportunity to relocate to XXX to become head of internal audit for the parent company, which was XXX.

That’s really where I gained a lot of my experience in the controls and compliance area.  For four years I led the organization, 30 professionals, providing operational, financial and IT audit services to over seven different decentralized operations in manufacturing, consumer products and distribution services.

When I left XXX, I was looking for an opportunity to become a CFO and decided to join a family-owned business in the XXX industry. It was an unbelievable experience in terms of the breath of my responsibility.  I had the traditional reporting, I had the banking and finance or treasury relationship, I had IT reporting to the human resources in addition to distribution responsibility.

What I learned about myself in that experience was – having come from what I would call blue chip companies, Fortune 500, public accounting firms – that the move into a family-owned business was not the right cultural fit for me.

From there I ended up getting into consulting, because I was networking for my job search with the woman who owned XXX.  She said well what are you going to do?  I said I’m looking for a position.  She said why don’t you come work for me while you look?  You can define your hours, but our business is really growing and we could use someone like you.

I ended up spending the last 10 years of my career in consulting as a result of that. Most recently, was the Chief Operating Officer for XXX, I’d gotten out of the delivery side and now heading up the back office operations, recruiting, staffing, marketing, business development and a lot of strategy around an integration that we went through.

We had acquired a firm then actually doubled the size of the revenues.  I was heavily involved in integrating the two firms both from an HR perspective as from a market pacing perspective and now looking for the next opportunity.  I really want to get back into, I think, a more traditional financial role within an organization.

Here’s how I would rate this answer . . .

Q1. Tell me about yourself – WENDY QUICK RATING – D

Too long and too much of resume history, zero in on a few relevant accomplishments or your experiences related to what they are seeking  for this specific job opportunity.