How to introduce yourself—and get hired | Rebecca Okamoto | TEDxNorthwesternU

0:00 – 2:20

The Five-Minute Interview That Changed Everything

Picture this: You have 20+ years of supply chain expertise at a Fortune 500 company. You're interviewing for an instructor role where you're the perfect fit. You've prepared an elevator pitch listing every accomplishment. Then comes 'Tell me about yourself'—and five minutes later, you're rejected on the spot. This happened to Rebecca Okamoto, and the interviewer's feedback cut deep: 'Instead of talking about yourself, it would have been more effective if you had explained what you can do for me.' That single interview became her wake-up call. She realized qualifications don't matter if you can't capture attention in those first crucial seconds. The problem wasn't her credentials—it was how she introduced them. She was answering a question nobody asked ('How qualified am I?') instead of the question everyone cares about ('What can you do for me?'). After this failure, she became obsessed with cracking the code of first impressions, studying everything from viral headlines to the neuroscience of attention.