How to Answer ‘Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?
To judge job candidates’ long-term goals, recruiters usually bring up this question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”. This question helps employers understand jobseekers’ career aspirations.
Yes, it is possible that you may not know where you want to see yourself after five years. But you should think hard to be certain of your long-term goals. It is important because you may be rejected if you go blank in front of the hiring manager. Read the following details carefully to get yourself enlightened:
What are employers looking for in your answer?
Usually, employers try to gather some key information before getting the candidate on board. You should keep these points in mind while answering, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Compare your expectations with the company’s goals
During the hiring process, employers discuss expectations of the job candidate, and it helps them to decide whether the candidate is the right fit or not. As a jobseeker, you should be honest about your long-term goals because if you join a company that is having a different vision than yours, you are unlikely to continue your employment in the long run. You should take this seriously because there are times when companies have to terminate the employment of their workers when they fail to live up to their expectations.
Check your willingness to stay around
Employers ask questions related to long term goals to check how much you are interested in the role. The reason being is hiring, onboarding, and training consume a lot of time, effort, and money. All of this can go in vain if they end up with a bad hire. Therefore, you should explain why you are interested in their company and how your skills can make a difference.
How to answer ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’
Just keep these two crucial things in mind and answer the question without breaking a sweat:
Talk about your experience
If you are applying for a higher position, you must talk about the experience that you have gained so far. Right from technical skills to people management skills, you should talk about everything because that’s how you can convince the hiring manager that you are worthy of getting the position.
Whenever companies hire for roles like assistant manager, deputy manager, senior manager, head of a department, etc., they expect a detailed answer to each question because closing such big positions is not easy. Even a shadow of doubt can result in a rejection. Therefore, always make sure that you describe everything you have mentioned in your CV appropriately.
Reflect on your interests
Irrespective of the industry, if you are interested in something, there’s always room for learning and growing continuously. Therefore, it is important for you to check where your interest lies, as that’s how you can commit yourself to a role completely. Once you find your area of interest, you can easily invest several years to reach an expert level. The same thing you need to explain to the recruiter so that he/she can understand your objectives completely. As a positive consequence, your chances of being hired will skyrocket.
Example answers
Here are a few examples of how to answer, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”:
Example 1: It will show your desire to gain industry knowledge, confidence, and plans
“In the next five years, I would like to become an industry expert that can offer out-of-the-box ideas and strategies when needed. I am confident about this because I’ve had amazing seniors in my past positions and learned what qualities I should be having to take on a leadership role. I’ll connect my ambitions with a company’s goals so that we both can grow in leaps and bounds.”
Example 2: It will show your desire of becoming a leader, exploring collaboration opportunities, and learning new skills
“One of my future goals is to take the leadership role so that I can lead my team from the front whenever we have a time-sensitive project. Plus, I would like to work with our global teams and find ways to streamline the project development process. And, yes, I would develop new skills to contribute more effectively.”
Summing up:
Cracking interviews can be an arduous task if you are not prepared. Right from your short-term to long-term goals, companies want to know everything for the sake of hiring the best.
With the help of this article, we have talked about one of the most asked questions: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Right from explaining why this question is important from the recruiter’s perspective to how you should answer it, we have discussed everything thoroughly. Even, we shared a few examples to give you complete clarity. So, start applying to jobs through Qjobs and crack an interview with ease.
