First meeting with your workplace mentor · Candidate chair
"So, tell me about yourself"
The question that assumes you have a career to describe.
They are not testing you. They are trying to work out what to give you to do, and they have about four minutes to decide. School counts here. So does anything you have organised, fixed, practised or stuck with.
Mentor: “So tell me a bit about yourself. What brings you here?”
Specific, checkable, and it hands them a job to give you. They now know you can be trusted with something careful.
True, and it could be any of four hundred students. Nothing here tells them what to hand you on Monday.
You have volunteered the one thing they already knew and given away the frame. Willingness is not a skill, and they still do not know what to do with you.
Mentor: “Have you done anything like this before?”
You did not pretend to experience you lack, and you answered what they were actually asking.
Honest, and it closes the door behind it. A short true answer with nothing after it makes them do all the work.
If they ask a second question you are exposed, and you have spent trust you will need later on something you did not need to claim.
Now you, out loud
One way it can sound
“”
Say it to the mirror, a friend, or the wall. Nothing here records, transmits, or stores anything. That is a promise built into how this site works.
Keep these
- School work is work. Name the part that required care.
- Never open with what you lack. They already know.
- Give them something to hand you on day one.