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Career Plans Are Dangerous

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

Despite the tendency to slip in some of the questions Google asks when interviewing people (such as, what is the next number in this sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66..?), this remains a fairly popular question when you are looking a job.

It’s usually an extremely silly question (although you are not supposed to say that in your response.) You know most of the reasons why the question is so bad: It begs a lame joke (“When, Ms. Manager, do you think you will be moving on?”), or brown-nosing (“I hope to be well along my career within this fine company”) and it assumes that you are going to indeed like working at “this fine company” and that they are going to enjoy having you.

But there is a bigger reason the question is awful. It assumes the world is going to remain constant between now and then. That is never a good idea.

Read more about this from President Schlesinger and his Just Start coauthors.