Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years Interview Question is one of the hardest one. I just linked to a very detailed post from The Career Mastery. It's quite a long so I though I can summarize it here.
When you are appearing for an interview, there will be plenty of questions you will need to deal with. One such question is, ‘where do you see yourself in 5 years?’ Now, a lot of us don’t even know why we are going to do in that year, leave apart thinking of 5 years. That is such a huge number, isn’t it? However, you cannot let your interviewer know that you are still so ambiguous which means that you need to prepare yourself for the question.
How To Best Answer It? (Amother good article from monster.com)
Now, this can be a little tricky. One of the best ways of coming up with the right answers when it comes to an interview is by judging the temperament and personality of your interviewer. If you are good at reading people, it will be a huge advantage for you as you will be able to gauge what kind of answers are most likely to impress them.
Keeping the general idea in mind, we will guide you with the best ways of answering this question. Of course, what you actually answer needs to be tailored based on what your interviewer needs.
Be honest but stay smart
It is important to be honest when you are answering the questions. But we are not asking you to list every possible detail. If you have some kind of shortcomings, you need to decorate your answer in an apt manner.
Make a mental note of the tools you are not proficient in and you can list them. However, before you do that, you need to spend some time working on your tools. When you become proficient in the skill, you can mention that it was your weakness. Of course, chip in non-related weakness too like if you have a fetish for sports, you can mention that. If you have a weakness for dessert, mention that.
The underlying idea is to stick to honesty and yet stay safe. You do not want to expose all your vulnerabilities together as doing so will only make matters worse for you. When you are willing to do so and put in this much of extra effort, it will help you impress your interviewer in an apt manner.
These are some of the things you need to keep in mind when you are looking to answer your interviewer. No matter, what you answer, you need to remember that you need to be both polite and cheerful together. Doing this can help you in ways more than one.
Appearing for an interview is stressful but in the end, you need to put in the right kind of preparation because your inability to do so can wreck havoc on your prospective career. Try and come up with different answers and then judge your interviewer, analyze him and then decide accordingly.
Give your very best for the interview and then be hopeful that things will work out in an apt manner. Of course, an interview demands you to be attentive and be focused till the very end.
Also a few videos;