- 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.