Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? Who cares!?
or ‘Do good things now and forget where you’re going’
Where do I see myself in five years? I have absolutely no idea! This is another one of those interview questions which makes no sense to me at all. I suppose not having a five year plan makes me unambitious but the question doesn’t reflect on the things which I think matter in life or business. Not having an answer won’t necessarily mean that a candidate is a poor choice for a job. Here’s what I’d look for in an employee: empathy and respect for others; being open to new ideas and points of view; taking pride in the things they create; a sense of responsibility. You can have all of those and never give a moment’s thought to where you might be five years from now.
Getting hung up on the future means taking your attention off what’s going on in your life right now. Chasing after a dream job can make you dissatisfied with your current position. That dissatisfaction can lead to unhappiness and a drop in the standard of your work which ironically means less chance of ending up where you want to be than if you never considered it in the first place. Who do you want on your team: people who are always thinking about where they’d really like to be, or people who care about what they’re doing right now?
There’s a question which I try to ask myself on a regular basis: “Is this a good thing to be doing?” The thing I like about that question is that it’s open to interpretation so a ‘good thing’ can be almost anything. To some people it will mean ‘a thing which will advance my career’, to others it might be about how they interact with people. It could mean good in the broader sense of acting selflessly in the service of others, they’re all valid. The one constant though is that a ‘good thing’ will always be good.
So if you ever find yourself faced with interviewing candidates for a job, try replacing “Where do you see yourself in five years?” with “Tell me about a good thing you’ve done.”
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