I hate that question too. 😐 My general policy with personal life is that I don't share mine till I know enough about the people around me to know whether it would help or hurt our interactions. I live in a very conservative/traditional area so things which are totally normal in most accounting circles aren't here, and if I'm going to be thought less of for doing them, then I'll keep it to myself. (For example, I will likely always make more money than my man. The traditionalism of this area means that generally, the man is the breadwinner, and the woman is just making some extra cash to go to the tanning beds. If I get the vibe that the women I work with are all in this group and think it's wrong for a guy not to make more money, then I won't let it out that my man makes less than me. If they're more open-minded, then I won't be like “Oh guess what? I support our household”, but I won't mind if it comes out, either.) However, my educational and professional history are on the resume, so what am I supposed to say?
I usually try to pull some interesting, useful nuggets out of my history to share – like if the job will involve interacting with people around the country, I might mention that I've lived in the north, south, west, and midwest (probably by naming the states), so am familiar with the cultures of much of our country. (I'm in the backhills of the south now, so sometimes people from here have a harder time understanding people from – say – California, cause the backhills of KY and the sunny beaches of CA create very different cultures!). I don't have to say how many siblings I had, what my dad did, or why we moved frequently, just that I've experienced these cultures. I'd probably talk about what my career plans have been and how my prior positions have fit into that (from getting management experience at a grocery store to being a clerk in order to understand accounting from the bottom up). Mostly, I would hope that a short answer was enough to make them happy and move on!
How many, that story is crazy! I'd have a hard time doing a 45-minute version of my story unless I was quite comfortable with the interviewer…
Lindrobe, small CPA firms are a world all their own, I'm not surprised that it didn't seem like a fit! haha. Good luck with others. 🙂 The good thing is that small firms can vary from one to another, but there's some things that seem to always stay the same…
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