Where do you see yourself at [employer] in 5 years?
Ambition has never been one of my vices.
I had an interview today.
I've been really racking them up lately, but no job offers have materialized yet.
It's been a while since I got one of these questions, probably just to mess with me over the fact that it's one I've prepared for.
Spring of 2024 saw my lay-off from the then-longest employment I'd ever had at one job, and I'd held the same job title for the entire duration (despite my roles and responsibilities steadily growing) of nearly seven years.
That was a lot to me.
(Don't blame me for it, I've been through three employers going bankrupt and four layoffs. I've been a temp three times where they decided not to keep me around, and had a yearly contract that wasn't renewed for another term. I've worked at 14 different places (unless I'm forgetting someone), been fired once and quit twice.)
I remember in my childhood being told the statistic that the average number of employers someone had was seven, but that feels like a number reminiscent of the days when companies showed the same loyalty to their employees that they asked from them, but as I've said before, "in this day and age... corporations feel no more loyalty to their employees than I have for individual pairs of underwear..." (Source).
The days of loyalty (and pensions) are long gone.
I've doubled that number and I'm not even forty yet (though it's coming up quick).
There's a lot about where I'll be in five years that's not suitable for an answer.
- Five years is when my current car turns ten, and I'll feel loads more comfortable about trading it in before it actually dies on me.
- In five years, hopefully we'll have a less tyrannical government.
- Five years is my goal for completing my purge-in-search-of-minimalism.
- ...and two of those are the precursor to my goal of being voluntarily homeless.
But telling a prospect employer any of those things is probably not something that will make me more appealing to be hired.
So instead, I told them this:
- I don't know what the growth opportunities are at [employer].
- I was at [previous employer] for almost seven years and maintained the same position.
- I hope to grow in my role as [job title], and find ways to utilize strengths of mine that don't appear on my resume or job history.
- I'd be perfectly happy still working in the role of [job title] in five years.
- Ambition has never been one of my vices.
I don't quite know where that last line came from, but I loved it enough that I had to write it down.
Though I confess, looking through the list of ambitious antonyms is eroding my confidence in what I thought was a good line. What do you think?
lazy, apathetic, unmotivated, idle, indifferent, unenthusiastic, disinterested, listless, lethargic, sluggish,
lax, timid, weak, derelict, indecisive, useless, passionless, inert, slothful...
I was just aiming for humility.
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