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“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
In a previous post, I wrote about another cliché interview question, “What are your weaknesses?”. In today’s post, I am going to respond to a different, and maybe trickier, question, “where do you see yourself in 5 years?”.
“All happy families are alike; and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” — Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina
For every job opening, there are dozens or hundreds of applicants, and if you are applying at fuck’n Google, then be warned that they get about 2 zillion applicants each year, most of them are not qualified anyway, just like you. Without reading Tolstoy’s novel, the interviewers just follow the Anna Karenina principle. They all know that it is easier to filter out bad candidates; then focus on the good ones. This means that at one side of the table, there is an applicant trying their best to get the job, and on the other side, there is an interviewer trying their best to find one reason to reject this application. But you are not just any applicant. You know that this isn’t just a question, it is a warm invitation to bullshitting, and you have gladly received the invitation.
