How to Pitch Yourself in an Interview

I interviewed around 500 engineering candidates during my time at Facebook and Nextdoor, and half of them did not know how to pitch themselves.

As far as behavioral questions for software engineers go, “tell me about yourself” is the one you will be asked most reliably at each stage of your interview and even multiple times during a single onsite. Your elevator pitch should answer this question thoughtfully. If you have prepared well, you will be able to control your own narrative by telling your story and guiding your interviewer to the questions you want to receive in return. Pitching yourself well should be at the top of your priority list if you’re gearing up for interviews.

The “tell me about yourself” question

In a recent post, we shared why you should be confident answering this question before you even apply for a job. That’s where your elevator pitch comes in. Crafting your pitch is the most productive way to prepare for, arguably, the most important behavioral interview question you’ll be asked.

You should be prepared to get asked this question in one of many different forms. Don’t be thrown off by the wording, just focus on what they’re asking you for. Depending on your interviewer, they may ask you this question in some of the following ways:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Why should we hire you?
• What makes you unique?
• What do you bring to the table that other candidates don’t?
• What brings you here?

Pitching yourself: Building your story arc

Everyone’s engineering journey begins somewhere. It’s your job to convey your story to an interviewer in a way that flows naturally. Through your story arc, you are essentially making a series of claims about yourself and your work ethic so that an interviewer can understand why you’d be a good fit for the role. Your job is to show that you’re passionate about engineering, not afraid to put in the hard work, have experience shipping things that impact peoples’ lives, and are excited to do that at X company. Let’s break down the four phases of an elevator pitch about yourself.

1. Identify your initial spark in engineering

Crafting your pitch begins with identifying your spark. What got you interested in engineering? Were you the type of person who took apart your computer as a kid because that was your idea of fun?

Interviewers, especially at top-tier companies, want to know what triggered your passion to build stuff. Let’s use Justin Johnson, one of our former Fellows, as an example. Justin was working in technical theater when he had the idea to build a glove that programmatically created different musical sounds for a performance. That project lit a fire inside him and made him realize he wanted to build more. Justin’s journey to his current role as a Developer at Dropbox began with this one spark that demonstrates where his interest in engineering stems from. Start your elevator pitch with a story about your own spark.

2. Speak to the hard work you've put in

Having a spark isn’t enough, you actually have to show that you’ve put in the work. In this phase, you need to explain what you did with your spark. In a typical day of work, an engineer looks into a problem and, upon closer inspection, realizes that solving it is way harder than they expected. This happens repeatedly, and interviewers want to know that you aren’t going to be easily defeated by difficult situations.

In the grind phase of your story arc, explain the challenges you’ve faced and how you handled them. Show how you tried X, Y, and Z to solve problems, what you ended up doing, and what you built. The crucial part of this phase is expressing to your interviewer that yes, you’ve failed or faced difficulties in the past, but you’re ready to repeat everything and tackle the next big challenge.

3. Describe what you learned at a past company

You likely got a dose of reality in your first professional experience. During the grind phase, you probably hit some level of comfort zone where you realized you could build all these different things to solve problems. Then, in your first professional experience, you were tasked with building something to spec that was assigned to you, possibly even using someone else’s code. That’s when things became much harder. In this phase of your story arc, you’ll want to express what you learned from working at X company, how you navigated your experience, and what you want next in your career.

4. Line up the pieces and show why you're the perfect fit

The final phase of your elevator pitch, and arguably the most important, is to make the conclusion of your story seem inevitable. Think of your story like it’s a classic romantic comedy movie where all the pieces are lining up perfectly for that cheesy, predictable ending. Your story should be just as predictable, except the conclusion your interviewer should reach is that everything in your life has led you to be the perfect fit for this role at this company. This is the final phase of your story arc and it should round out your pitch.

Pitching yourself doesn’t mean you have to “sell” the interviewer on hiring you; it simply means they should walk away from the interview with a good understanding of who you are and why you’re a great fit for the open role. You should go into every interview with a thoroughly thought out and practiced elevator pitch. That way, when you’re asked what makes you stand out, you’ll have an easy-to-follow story that leads your interviewer to the inevitable conclusion: you’re a perfect fit for their company.

Looking for more actionable interview advice like this? Our Software Engineering Fellowship is packed with it. Apply now to unlock your career's potential!