Tips to Answer “Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?”

Three Points to Base Your Answer On

Once you generally know where you hope to be in your career after five years, you now have to understand how you’re going to communicate this to the recruiter. Of course, it’s best not to lie, but if your new job isn’t where you hope to be for the next five years, you need to find something that makes you a good candidate for the job offer without disqualifying you from the pool of job seekers. Here are a few options if you’re looking for example answers:

• Growing and changing with the company

  The first thing you can spotlight is a desire to grow and change with the company. For example, if you’re working for a startup, a great sample answer may be, “I’m really excited to see where this company ends up going. I really love the company culture that I’ve already seen here, and in the next five years, I think we could do a lot to move the field forward as a whole.” With this, you’re indicating that you don’t want to move on to a new job anytime soon, and you believe that you’ll stay with the company for some time.

• Work you want to do for the company’s benefit

  You can also choose to center the work that you see in the job description. For example, if you’re applying for a project management position, you might say, “I’m really excited to start managing this program for you guys. In previous job titles, I’ve been able to help improve efficiency and bring team members together, and that’s something I’m really excited to do here. In the next five years, I really want to have a much larger group of people to manage.” This shows the hiring manager that you don’t just want to move on to the next job as fast as possible and that you have career plans based around this company.

• Skills you want to develop

  Lastly, you can also include specific skills you want to develop at this job. You might say something like, “I really want to improve my certifications and have a more robust system of new skills. Specifically, I think learning more about social media management could be a huge step forward in my career, and in five years, I’d love to know more about how to promote a company through social media.” This answer helps the hiring manager understand the specific goals that you’re trying to develop.