 Hi, in this video, I will take you through how to answer the where do you see yourself in five years? The interview question and talk through the pitfalls to avoid. My name is Jess Coles and if you are new to this channel, Enhance.Training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up or subscribe or share it with friends. When you see yourself in five years, it's a tough interview question to answer and it definitely pays to plan out your answer in advance. When we're job hunting, most of us are focused on landing the job we want today rather than thinking about what we might do in five years time. There are several ways to successfully answer this question and which you choose will depend in part on your situation and the job that you are going for. It can be easy to talk yourself out of the job with this question, so keep your answer short. Before we start answering this interview question, it makes sense to understand what the interviewer is wanting to find out. Firstly, the interviewer wants to know that you are going to be focused on making sure that you do a good job in the role that you're applying for. I mean, after all, if you don't do a good job with a current role, promotion will remain pretty unlikely. Include in your answer a section talking about your focus on doing a great job first and foremost. The interviewer is looking to hire a person to solve current problems. Next, the interviewer is looking to get a sense of your ambitions and if the company can realistically meet them. This part of the question can be hard to answer without ruling yourself out of a job. Let's go through a number of the pitfalls first before answering this part of the interviewer's question. The first pitfall, as mentioned before, is not being focused on the role that you're applying for. You must not fall into this trap if you want to get a job offer. Do talk about making sure you're going to do a good job in the role that you're applying to before you do anything else. The second pitfall is talking about unrealistic ambitions. For instance, if you're a couple of years into your career and you talk about being a CEO in five years, the interviewer is probably going to cross you off their list. The safest approach in answering where do you see yourself in five years is not to talk about a specific position. Keep what you do say fairly general in terms of where you want to get to. I mean, after all, five years is quite a long way off in anyone's career. There are times when you may want to talk about specific positions. For instance, if you're entering into a training contract and you need a certain amount of practical experience, you know, a Chartered Accountant Qualification is a typical example of this. In this case, talk about getting your qualification as your goal alongside doing a great job. The third pitfall is talking about ambitions that don't align with what is required for the role that you're applying for. If you do talk about a position or a general level of role, then make sure that that role you're applying to is considered a normal role on the career journey to that position. If there is not a clear connection, the interviewer will be left confused, may doubt your commitment and you'll probably be ruled out of the running. For instance, if you're going for a Supplier Chain Manager role and you say you eventually want to get to a Supplier Chain Director role, this makes sense and is absolutely fine. However, if you talk about your love of marketing, you probably won't get any further with the job application. The fourth pitfall is not showing enough ambition. This pitfall is more common in the management ranks and in fast moving or growing companies that need to innovate and develop to continue succeeding. These positions often require a desire to learn and develop skills. Selecting people with some ambition helps keep the workforce relevant, learning and valuable. Your research is important to discover what sort of approach to staff development the company you're applying to has. And also ask yourself what is considered normal in your sector or function for the role that you're applying to? And of course, tailor your answer accordingly. As a very broad rule of thumb, in the professional to mid-management ranks, I would expect high flyers to change roles but not necessarily companies every one to three years and more typical workers every two to five years. Talk about the wrong level of ambition or display too little ambition and you'll probably be out of the running. And the last pitfall is to come across as being a threat to your line managers role. There are very few managers that are looking to hire individuals that want to take over their roles before they have gained their own promotion. Make sure your answer takes into account at this pretty important point. Whatever you do, don't threaten your potential manager's position or give any indication that you will not provide full support to your manager. So coming back to how much of your ambitions to talk about in an interview depends on what you know about the company, what is considered a normal level of ambition for the role that you're applying to and thirdly the clues that you get during the interview process. If in doubt, play it safe and keep your answers fairly general about the future. That said, interviews are a two-way street. Ask the interviewer where your career might progress to if you do well in your role that you're applying to. I mean, after all, taking the role that gives you the best prospects over the next five years makes sense for your career. Provide the interviewer your answer and then finish by asking, if I were to be promoted in the future, what would be a typical career path in this business? You can also follow up with a question like, how do you ensure that individuals with potential are developed within the business? You want to find out what priority the business puts on training and developing their staff. The question we're often asked is how long should I take when answering where do you see yourself in five years? If you spend a lot of time answering this question, you are likely to give too much information away, and this is unlikely to help your application. Keep your answer short and to the point. We suggest answering in 15 to 20 seconds and no more than 30 seconds. Remember, keep this answer short. Firstly, if I'm offered the position, I would want to focus the next year on making sure I deliver on all aspects of this role. I know I'll need to prove my value to the company before I can be considered for any promotional opportunities. I'm keen to progress my career. How do you develop and promote talented staff members here? My first priority is to work with the team to meet your goal of doubling turnover in the next five years. I recognize that this is a very important goal for the business success. I also understand with the success of the business comes more opportunities for my career development too. So to answer your question, if I joined your team, I'd want to be looking back, having achieved the growth goal and gone on to set new challenges to drive the company's success. What career opportunities do you see coming available over the next five years? Make sure you keep your answer short, clear and focused on delivering first. End your answer with any questions so that you can get the hiring manager's perspective on the opportunities at this company and what the company does to support your development. And lastly, if you like this video, please hit the thumbs up button below or subscribe and hit the bell to get notified of our weekly video releases and share this video with friends. Thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.