This is one of those things that took me way too much time to figure out.

As an interviewer, I never asked this question because I never knew what answer to expect from such a thing.

As an interviewee, my answer was way too many times just I don’t know. Which didn’t look good… ever. I could tell how baffled the interviewers were. More often than not they tried to somehow rephrase the question, but I only remember that working once (with Emilio Gutter and the folks from 10Pines) and even then it just barely worked.

My answer was always honest. I really can’t think past a year or two into the future. What comes next is totally unpredictable to me. Will I be playing professional curling in 2020? I don’t know… probably not, but… how can I be sure, right?

I’m still unsure how to answer that question in a way that provides any value to the interviewer. Should I say working in the same position I’m applying for now? Doesn’t that mean I have no passion for growing? Should I say conducting an interview like this one (i.e. on your position)? Wouldn’t that be too intimidating for the interviewer?

As an interviewer, I still prefer a different approach, for instance what we did with the Inakos:

Here you can see our company’s career path. Check this graph, I can explain it for you…

What do you think about it?

If you were to enter here [pointing at one of the nodes in the career path]… which path you would like to follow? Let me tell you what we do to help you get there and what we expect from you…