Tell me about yourself.
"My father worked for the IRS for nearly his whole career. When he retired, he started his own accounting practice. He was always sharing his passion for numbers, and for how many programs there are which can help your money work for you and help you in any given situation. He always said, despite their reputation, the IRS are the good guys. But you have to be willing to do the footwork to find out about the programs available to you to further yourself financially. So, the world of finance is deeply ingrained in who I am, and when you are good at something, two things happen. You love the work you do, and you have a passion to always be the best. So, following my career through university to my current company, my pursuits have now led me to the doors of HSBC."
This question is used as an icebreaker with the aim of getting you out of interview mode. Your resume and CV caught their attention, and now they are giving you an opportunity to introduce yourself. Not only does this question serve as a personality check, and how well you would fit into their work culture and their teams, but it also serves as a test of your communications skills, and how well communicated your 'elevator pitch' is. So before your interview, compose a brief professional biography that demonstrates your educational and professional accomplishments, covering why you chose your career and where you hope to take it. End on why you are interested in working with HSBC and why they feel like the right fit for you.
As they advertise on their career pages, "HSBC has engaged with a Video Interviewing technology partner called Modern Hire which has Live Video interviewing capabilities. A Live Video can be used in place of face to face interviews or meetings. On Demand interviews are questions that are pre-set for you to answer via video (or audio where indicated) which do not require an interviewer either on the phone or face to face to listen to your responses live." And as Modern Hire advertises on their site, they practice Automated Interview Scoring, "using the power of AI to evaluate and score the content of a candidate's response, and stack and rank their candidates by their score. Gain confidence with assistive Simplify selection and know you're moving the best candidates forward with rank-ordering based on an overall score."
So when an AI driven assessment vendor asks informal questions like these, they are counting on it resulting in a more sincere answer. This will help them establish when you are being truly sincere and more true to yourself. They can then contrast your genuine personality against your more reserved or more performative answers.
HSBC offers some interview tips before you begin. "Allow some time before the interview start time to enter the virtual interview room and check that the webcam, sound and lighting is suitable for your interview before it begins. Close any unnecessary browsers or applications that may notify you and distract you on your device during your interview. Have a glass of water ready next to you if you need it during the interview. Ensure you are in a quiet room or area, well lit and free of distractions."