Get that job

• Putting together your showreel
• Tips for making a showreel
• How to succeed in a group interview
• Top 10 group interview dos and don'ts
• Nailing a phone interview
• Telephone interview dos and don'ts
• How to resign gracefully
• Dos and don'ts of leaving
• Facebook your way to a fabulous career
• Writing a resume for an executive position
• Cover emails: what you should know!
• How to Write a KILLER Resume
• Resume writing tips
• General sample resume
• General sample cover letter
• Resume writing tips for teens
• Sample 'my first resume'
• Sample 'my first cover letter'
• Romancing your job
• Top 10 interview dos and don'ts
• Tricky interview questions
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• What’s your biggest weakness?
• Why did you leave your last job?
• How do you handle criticism?
• Nail that interview
• Interview tips

The ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’ probe is a must to prepare for in your repertoire of pre-planned interview spiels. Like most other questions thrown your way while you’re in the career hot seat, it’s just another springboard from which to harp on about why you should be moving into their offices and onto the payroll in the immediate future. Use it to show that you have decisive career goals, are keen to jump on opportunities as they arise and are aiming for the top.

If kids were held accountable to their responses to the granddaddy of these speculative pearlers – ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ – then the world would be an interesting place. We would have no shortage of firemen, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, policemen, Transformers, pilots, supermen, doctors, Barbies, actresses, Harry Potters, prime ministers, and popstars. But there would be a severe shortage of bureaucrats and recruitment managers. Perhaps that’s not such a bad idea …

A roadmap and itinerary wasn’t handed out as part of a ‘welcome to your life’ orientation session. In fact, if you could foresee the future you probably wouldn’t be sitting opposite an unoriginal interviewer; it’s more likely that you would have won the lottery aeons ago and retired to a life sipping blueberry caprioskas in the south of Spain.

For now, here are a few simple guidelines to stick to in order to get past the question and on with the next five years of your career.


Keep it short
Granted, a lot can happen in five years. In fact, a lot can happen in a week! All the more reason why the interviewer doesn’t want to spend their next week listening to a blow-by-blow account of your future plans. Keep the unabridged version for your diary (or mother) and indulge your prospective employer with a synoptic overview so they can get on with the next silly question and their own life.

Keep it relevant
You hope to get around to painting your backyard fence in five years? You have a feeling the waitress in the local deli will finally realise you are the one? You will have had your appendix removed?

Unfortunately, like your dreams, your diet and how many tequila shots you drank last night, no one else cares. Keep to the business end of the deal and restrict your response to career plans only.

Don’t take the question too seriously
It’s a silly question and the interviewer knows it, so the last thing they want is for you to launch into out-of-the-box methods to predict the unpredictable. Pulling out references to aligning moons, tea-leaf arrangements and handsome career outcomes lurking in crystal balls is not going to suddenly convince them that you have astounding foresight – but it will convince them that your application is going straight through the shredder.

Tailor your answer to the job
Depending on the type of industry you are aiming to work in and whether it’s in the public or private sector, or a large or small company, your answer will be very different. Think about what opportunities they have to offer and show that you hope to grow into their company by taking on bigger projects and more responsibility. They don’t expect that you will be working with them forever, but they do want to see loyalty and commitment to the job. Whatever you do, don’t say that, one day, you hope to work for their main competitor!

Show you are ambitious …
You can’t predict the future, but you can show that you are ready to make the most of it. You can’t loose by showing a passion for the career path you are about to embark on and an enthusiasm to take on any challenges or opportunities that may present themselves in the future. Remember ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’ is a very different breed of question to ‘how would you spend your last day on planet earth?’. Spending the day in bed, overindulging in foods full of fat and sugar, and telling your boss what you think of them is not what the interviewer wants to hear, even if it sounds like a rather interesting tack to take.

… but not too ambitious
Sure, you hope to have a private office with water views, plush leather couches and a rich mahogany desk in five years time. Naturally, a big pay packet and a gold-plated desk nameplate letting the world know that you are the big cheese both sound good too. These are fair enough ambitions, but unlikely to happen if you make it clear mid-interview that you have your sights on usurping the interviewer from his own job and office.

The best way to answer this question is to think about what sort of employee the company wants now – someone who is enthusiastic, ambitious and aiming for success. Let your answer show that you have the ideas, motivation and passion to add value to their company in the future.

How have you tackled this tricky question? Tell us your answer at publishing@careerfaqs.com.au.

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