How to answer the “Could you walk me through your resume?” question

Another common question your interviewer may ask is, “Could you walk me through your resume?” Similar to the tell me about yourself question, this question can set the tone and context for the rest of the interview. Therefore, it is important to create an answer to this question in advance to ensure the interview runs smoothly.

The answer to this question should come rather easily if you have completed the answer to the “tell me about yourself” question already. Either way, I'll be providing you with a few tips and a script to help you form an effective answer for this important question. 

Here are the steps I used to build a great answer to this question:

1. Develop 3-4 sentences for each role you worked in the past 

2. State how long you've been working in the industry

3. Talk about responsibilities and actions undertaken in this role (most important)

4. Talk about any accomplishments you had in this role

5. Do this for the next 2-3 roles you worked in the past

For this question, I recommend you start with your work history first because this is what interviewers are primarily interested in getting to know. When I used to interview people, I put a lot more emphasis on knowing what responsibilities and problems the candidates worked on and how they managed to solve the issues they experienced.

Your past work experience is more indicative of your skills and expertise than education or other experiences you accumulated. Therefore, get to the most important projects, problems, and actions you were involved in right away. 

The goal of the answer should be to outline what roles you held, types of projects or problems you worked on, and what actions you took to be successful in your past roles.

Here is an example:

“Could you walk me through your resume?”

“I would love to and I'll start with my experience first. 

I have been working as a Project Manager for the last four years.

“In my most recent role, I worked as a Project Manager for Oracle. I joined this role in 2019. In this role, I was in charge of managing and executing eight IT projects, and I managed a team of 20 people. Also, I helped my department scope, plan, and budget for new projects. I used Jira software to manage our projects and used Agile Methodology extensively to successfully complete projects.

In the role before that, I joined Lenovo in 2016 and worked as a Project Manager. 

In this role, I managed a team of ten project managers and rolled out nine Software Development projects. I helped our team roll out new features to our software products. Also, I regularly spoke with clients to get product feedback. In this role, I used the Asana project management software to effectively manage my projects. Also, I used Agile Methodologies and Scrum techniques to manage and complete projects.

I am a certified Project Manager. And I received my bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto.

Please let me know if you have specific questions about my resume. I would love to answer them for you.”

Use the above example to build out your own answer and practice it until you are fluent. 

Much love!