This is often the first substantive question in an interview, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Most candidates treat it as an invitation to narrate their CV from top to bottom. It isn't. It's an opportunity to tell a compelling professional story that ends at this interview — and most people miss it entirely.
What this question is not asking
The interviewer has your CV in front of them. They don't need you to read it back. What they want is the connective tissue: why you made each move, what thread runs through your career, and why the story ends here.
Candidates who recite job titles and dates in order — "I started at Company A in 2018, then in 2020 I moved to Company B where I did X and Y" — are not answering the question. They're wasting an opening. This is your first chance to shape how the interviewer sees your entire professional history.
The Present-Past-Future structure
The most effective approach reverses the CV order. Start with where you are now, touch on what got you here, then connect to where you're going — and why this role is the next step.
Present: Start with your current or most recent role. What do you do, at what level, and what's the key thing you're known for? One to two sentences. This grounds the interviewer in who you are right now.
Past: Move backward selectively. Don't cover every job. Cover the two or three moves that explain how you developed the skills most relevant to this role. The question to ask yourself: what do I want them to understand about my background? Cover that, not everything.
Future: Connect your trajectory to this role. Why does the story lead here? This is where the interview hook lives — you're explaining why this opportunity is the logical next chapter, not just somewhere you happened to apply.
What to include and what to skip
Include: Career moves that explain your development. Roles where you built the skills most relevant to this job. Any significant shift in direction and the reason for it.
Skip: Basic job duties that are on your CV anyway. Every role in chronological order. Anything that doesn't serve the story you're telling. Early-career positions if you have significant experience.
A good walk-through should take 90 seconds to two and a half minutes. Not longer. If you're going past three minutes, you're narrating, not storytelling.
Sample answer
"Currently I'm a [job title] at [current company], where I lead [key area of responsibility]. I've been there for [X years] and the main things I've built there are [two or three specific skills or achievements].
Before that I spent [X years] at [previous company] in a [type of role]. That's where I got my grounding in [foundational skill] — I was quite junior when I joined and by the time I left I was [higher level of responsibility], which gave me [specific experience].
The reason I moved to [current company] was [genuine, specific reason — not just 'better opportunity']. And the reason I'm now looking at this role is [specific, role-related reason that connects your trajectory to this job]. The scope of what you're describing here — particularly [specific aspect from job description] — is the direction I've been building toward and haven't had the full opportunity to own yet."