- Where do you see yourself in five years? is a problematic question, because the wording tricks you into thinking about a role you might wanna have in five years. Where do you see yourself, right?
But the best answers actually focus on the journey you hope to take, instead of imagining a five year time skip and saying a title you expect to have in five years, with no reasoning or backup whatsoever. What's worse, you might not even wanna stay for five years. So how do you stay authentic and true to yourself without killing your chances right off the bat.
In this video, I'm gonna share a formula I've come up with that helps you avoid these traps, that helps you stay genuine. I'm also gonna give you sample answers so you can see the formula in action. Let's get started.
Hi friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Jeff, and this channel is all about practical career and interview tips. So if you are a current student or young professional, consider subscribing for more actionable content.
I think we all know by this point that questions like, where do you see yourself in five years? or what are your career goals in five years? They're really asking, "are you gonna be a dependable employee who's gonna stay here for the long haul.
" The thing is, you probably don't know, I joined my first job after college as a management consultant thinking I'd stay there for awhile, but left and joined Google two years later. So how do you give a genuine answer to this question while signaling to the interviewer, what your career goals are and that you're gonna be there long term. The answer, something I call the Specific to Broad formula.
It's not a sexy name but bear with me here. The trick is to break down the five years in the interview question into one to three year intervals, and say what you expect to be doing for each time frame. When you talk about the first one to two years, you can be very specific because if you've done your research by going on Glassdoor, connecting with professionals on LinkedIn, binge watching all of my videos, you should have a good understanding of the day to day of the job.
Then as you talk about years, three to five, there's a lot more unknown, a lot more uncertainty. So your answer can become broader and focus more on the overall direction you see yourself heading towards. This Specific to Broad approach helps you achieve several things.
Number one, helps you focus your answer on what you'll be doing instead of a specific title or role. Because if you think about it, saying any title you expect to have in five years will be the wrong answer. Something too aggressive, they'll think you're a little pretentious and arrogant, something too conservative that might question your confidence and ability.
Number two, this approach gives you the opportunity to talk about the skills you wanna develop within the next five years. Thus showing a proactive nature, your willingness to learn new things about the company and industry. And number three, as you'll see in an example answer coming up, this formula signals to the interviewer that you are willing to stay longterm given the right conditions without saying those exact words out loud.
By the way, if you're finding this formula helpful, a like and sub to the channel would be amazing. So jumping right into an example answer to the, where do you see yourself in five years interview question. This is the answer I gave when I was interviewing for my first management consulting role based out of New York City.
So Jeff, where do you see yourself in five years? Sure, so actually I had the opportunity to chat with a few alumni who currently work at EY. And I understand that first year consultants are generalists and can work on a variety of projects across different industries.
So for the first one to two years, I really look forward to keeping an open mind and absorbing as much industry specific knowledge as I can, from my peers, from managers, from clients, no matter what type of project I'm put on. At the same time, I really hope to use the project management skills that I developed during my consulting internship with KPMG that will hopefully make the project manager's life a little bit easier. When I'm not staffed on an engagement, I'll definitely be helping out on business development pitch decks for anyone who might need the help, , and I think that's a great opportunity for me to touch on even more industries.
For the two to three years after that, I look forward to specializing in one business vertical and really expanding my network and capabilities in that area. Not only would that help with my relationship building with clients, but I would also be able to share my learnings with new first year consultants, new me's, so to speak. I also hope to leverage my industry knowledge and client relationships at this point in time to take a more active part in pitching additional engagements.
So to sum up, in five years I see myself working on projects across different industries, specialize in one business vertical by building up my capabilities there, and hopefully adding value along each step of the way. A few things to note about that sample answer to where do you see yourself in five years. First, nowhere do I explicitly say, "oh, I'm definitely gonna be here five years later, for sure don't you worry about it.
" Instead, I say, I want to specialize in something here and really expand my capabilities in a given vertical, highlighting my eagerness to learn more about the business. Secondly, I talk about mentoring others and taking a more active part in pitching additional client engagements. This conveys to the interviewer that I can see myself getting promoted here without saying the exact titles and implicitly let them know what my long-term career goals are.
Finally, you'll notice I start off specific, I know first year consultants start off as generalists and ended my answer broad, I wanna continue my learning, I'm gonna specialize in one vertical, et cetera. This means I'm not backing myself into a corner. So to quickly recap.
Your answer to the, where do you see yourself in five years interview question, should leverage the Specific to Broad formula. Break the five years down into two time intervals and be more specific for the first one to two years, and move on to a broader answer for the remaining two to three years. This allows you to signal to the interviewer that you're willing to stay long term, given the right conditions without having to explicitly say those words out loud.
All right, there you have it. A simple way to answer this inherently tricky interview question. Please give this video a like if you found it helpful and let me know down in the comments below if you have any questions.
Subscribe if you haven't already, see you on the next video and in the meantime have a great one.
