Almost immediately after I published my blog last week, Why do we struggle with “Tell me about yourself”?! I got a few emails and calls from my clients. Their plea, “Dilip, working with you we have come to learn how to respond to this interview question. But, how do we respond to a similar question that often arises in a social setting?” Typically, what happens is at a social event—not a company event—someone shuffles over to you and introduces themselves. Then they ask the inevitable question, So, you work at SAP! Great, but what do YOU do?

In a social setting such a question is not easy to answer because you do not know the context in which the person is asking the question. It is tempting to create a version of “Tell me about yourself” script for such occasions, but it may not end up serving you well. Why? Because the response to this classical interview question is grounded in the full awareness of the context in which what you say will be interpreted and it will require little or no further explanation if you do it right. Such is not the case in a typical social setting for someone from a “random” crowd.

An analogy comes to mind in response to such a question in a social setting. When Einstein first came to the US after his famed General Relativity postulate was proved right a reporter asked him the question, Dr. Einstein, now that your General Relativity has proven to be correct, can you briefly tell us what it is all about?

In a humorous response that is now a classic, Einstein pauses and asks that reporter, Can you first explain to me how a cake is made? Why, Sure, replies the eager reporter, with a puzzled look: You take some flour first and then…. Einstein interrupts the reporter and asks him what is flour? Puzzled, the reporter says it is made by finely powdering some grain in a mill. Einstein interrupts him again and asks, What is a mill? The frustrated reporter tries to explain yet again, but Einstein interrupts him, smiles, and tells him, “See how difficult it is to explain something when you do not have the underlying, context, glossary, or terminology as a part of your basic understanding of what you are talking about?”

“The same thing is going to happen when I start explaining to you General Relativity,” Einstein continued, chuckling. “First you must become familiar with its antecedent concepts before I can begin to tell you what it is about and why we needed it. Now that you understand my problem let me briefly tell you that the General Relativity defines how an object surrounding space-time warps it and the degree of that warp is proportional to the mass of that object. Get it?” With that the reporter walked away shaking his head!

Of course, in a social conversation you are not trying to explain General Relativity or even Higgs Boson, but my point is that there has to be some context setting and common “synching up” with the other person asking this question before you can meaningfully respond in a noisy, distracting, and oft-intoxicated environment before the person decides to walk away from you, shaking their head because you failed to communicate in response to such an obvious and expected question.

So, what is the right way to respond to such a question?

Of course, you do not want to respond to a person’s question with a question back to them (you could be talking to someone potentially very important to you and you do not want diss them with such a question, which may sound condescending). So, begin by giving an overview, I am a software engineer at SAP responsible for providing SAP the ability to take orders, track them, and process them for delivery and payment. I have a team of 40 engineers and project managers that have been working on this system for the past five years.

At this point you observe their body language, facial expression, and how they respond to what you are saying. If you see a quizzical look on their face, with their eyes glazing over, obviously they understood very little, other than perhaps that you have a team of 40 engineers and something about five years. Then you ask something about them and say, May be I can explain this better if I know what kind of work you are engaged in. If the person responds by saying, I am a housewife raising my family and I do not understand anything that is happening in the Silicon Valley (or in technology), then you need to rapidly switch gears.

Now that you understand how you need to communicate respectfully to this person what you do at work, reorder your script by saying, Let me explain what I just said in a different way: Have you used Amazon to purchased something for yourself or even used eBay? Unless the person is from another planet the response is going to be affirmative. Then say, just as you can purchase and pay on eBay or Amazon an item with a few clicks and they get paid and you get your item in a few days, I do that for SAP for companies that buy from us.

Of course, you are going to encounter people of different backgrounds and interests asking you such a question in a general social setting. So, it is best to have a strategy based on the above flow to respond appropriately. What works best in such situations is not to assume anything and to go from how a person responds to your original statement about the role and the size of your team, etc. Most people want to know about where you fit in the organization and the size of your responsibilities. So, conveying that you lead a team of 40 and have something to do in software engineering is a good enough start to get you calibrated on what to say or ask next.

Research shows that in a social setting most random encounters last about four minutes. Most people decide in that time if they want to move on to the next person or to continue talking to the person they are already engaged with. So, make sure that whatever you say and ask them to say is going to be covered in about that amount of time. Some people just do not know when to stop talking, and when they get into that mode they are making it difficult for the other person to exercise this four-minute rule and walk away from you politely (Remember the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine is cornered by a nerd who cannot stop talking and she had to tap her head with her free hand to signal Jerry to extricate her from that encounter?).

Also, in social settings most people want to glad-hand, get to know interesting people, and engage in a sparkling conversation. So, see if you can make your encounter more engaging by using everyday vernacular and giving a comparative example. “Before I took over this team of 40 it used to take us weeks to sort through who wanted what from us and then months to figure out if they got it and if we got paid for it. Now we can do it in less than a minute.”

Such encounters can also be an opportunity for serendipitous outcomes, where someone asking such a question could open doors for you with new opportunities. But, in that vein do not thrust your business card after you delivered your pitch and before they walk away from you. That would be rude and gratuitous. If, however, they ask for your card it obviously means that you have made a mark. If you do not have a card on you see if you can get away by asking them if they are on LinkedIn or Facebook. Then, after you get back to your place send them an InMail or a Friend request within a day or two before they forget who you are.

So, do not take social encounters lightly and learn how to respectfully package your message in response to: So, What Do YOU Do? May be you’ll learn something about yourself in the process, too!

Good luck!