Where you do see yourself in five years?

What is your five-year plan? 

Another common one that so many people dread: Where you do see yourself in five years?

The interviewer wants to understand more about your career goals and how this position would fit into your grand plan. They care about your career goals because they want to hire someone who is motivated, proactive, and likely to stick around and work hard if hired.

So what should you say?

1. Keep your answer fairly general, especially if you don’t know a lot about the typical career path at the company. For most interview questions, I recommend being SPECIFIC because general answers tend to be bland and easily forgettable. This is the exception. Make your answer truthful, but broad enough that it doesn’t raise doubts about whether you would be a good fit for this position at this organization.

2. Stress your interest in a long-term career at the company (especially if you have short job tenures on your resume). Your interviewer wants to know that you’re ready to settle in and grow with the firm. The truth is that anything can happen. The company could go out of business, they could lay you off, or you could be lured away for a better opportunity.

However, remember that the organization is going to be investing considerable time, energy, and money in hiring and training someone for this job. You must at least show an honest intention to stay long enough to be a good investment.

3. Demonstrate your enthusiasm - Most importantly, make it clear that you are motivated to take on this opportunity right now.

 Examples-

1. “My goal right now is to find a position at a company where I can grow and take on new challenges over time. Ultimately, I’d like to assume more management responsibilities and get involved in product strategy. But most importantly, I want to work for an organization where I can build a career.”

2. “I am driven to be the best at what I do and I want to work somewhere where I’ll have opportunities to develop my skills, take on interesting projects, and work with people I can really learn from. Some of the most innovative thinkers in the industry work here and that’s a big reason why I would love to build a career here.”

What shouldn’t you say?

1. Don’t overthink it: “Well, that’s a very hard question. I don’t know what I’ll be doing in 5 years….hmmmm….that’s tough.”

It’s great that you take the question seriously, but you are not being evaluated based on accuracy of answer. Use your answer to reassure the interviewer that you’re invested in this career path.

2. Don’t be too specific: “I plan to be a VP at a major firm with at least 7 direct reports, a company car, and a salary of 150K (plus options of course).”

Ambition is good. Goals are good. However, if you are too specific, you run the risk of stating goals that are not realistically achievable in the job available.

3.  Don’t raise red flags: “Well, I’m not sure. I’m thinking about my own Business or business school.

Many job seekers have long-term visions of going back to College or starting their own business. These are admirable goals, but there’s no need to share them with your interviewer.

ALL THE BEST

http://pforpeoplemgt.hpage.com/

How to Answer Interview Questions with Good Answers Even When You don’t the Know the Answers!

Remain Calm

The best course of action when you don't know how to answer an interviewer's question is to remain at ease. Distract yourself with another pre-planned thought or count to five, and then give the question your best shot.

Be Honest

When you don't know how to answer an interviewer's question, it may just be best to be honest that you don't know the answer. It's best not to mislead your potential boss but rather, be straightforward.

Impromptu Ideas

An impromptu answer is one solution to an unknown job interview question. Before you give a response, briefly pause and then repeat what you were asked to give yourself a little time to ponder the question. After that, focus on one main point of the of the inquiry and support your answer with several facts or opinions. Even if you only partially answer the interviewer's original question, you gave it a solid effort.

Know the Basics

Prepare yourself before the interview with some basic questions about your industry. If you don't technically know an answer, fill in with a response to a similar question. 

For example, if you're applying for a sales job, you may be asked how you have handled a threatening customer in the past. If you have never dealt with the given scenario, you could say, "I have never faced that situation, however, I have addressed client complaints and we were able to talk through and resolve the issues at hand."

Follow that up with explaining how you deal with difficult real life work situations in more detail.

Thank you for reading my blog, I really appreciate it.  If you are interested in more, please click - http://pforpeoplemgt.hpage.com/

What are your Weaknesses?

When you're asked what your greatest weakness is there are several different ways you can answer, including mentioning skills that aren't critical for the job, skills you have improved on, and turning a negative into a positive. Instead of weakness you can accurate it as "Areas of Improvement”. 

These are some “Areas of Improvement” to choose from the next time you have a job interview:

I used to be a little unorganized, but I started using this tactic and my organization skills have really improved- Explain the specific method of organization you started using that has allowed you to be more organized. Your interviewer will be interested to hear how you’re improving

I want to improve on my Vocabulary. To improve it, I read a lot & try to use new words in each day conversation. – Explain what you read & How often.

I used to wait until the last minute to turn in assignments by their deadlines, but now I’ve started working ahead.”

I used to like to work on one project at a time, but now I can work on multiple and produce higher quality work.”

 You could explain that you've never been strong at public speaking, but over the past few years, you've asked for team leadership roles, run successfully meetings, and found tools to help you be more comfortable when addressing a crowd.

Always explain each weakness with suitable example to turn it into Positive.

Problems with performance appraisals!

Performance appraisal is the performance evaluation and assessment of job skills, personality and behaviour.  Performance appraisals are essential for the effective management and evaluation of staff. Appraisals help develop individuals, improve organizational performance, and feed into business planning.

Are performance appraisals beneficial and appropriate? Here are the Problems with performance appraisals-

A time-consuming process — most of the forms are incredibly long and time-consuming. As a result, some managers routinely recycle “last year’s” evaluations.

Don’t assess actual performance — most of the assessment that managers complete focuses on “the person,” including characterizations of their personal traits, knowledge, behaviours. They are not measures of actual output. If you want to assess the person, call it “person appraisal.” Performance is output quality, volume and responsiveness.

Disconnected from rewards — in too many organizations, getting a merit raise, bonus, or promotion is completely disconnected from an employee’s performance appraisal scores.

Doesn’t address diversity — all too often, the same appraisal form is applied to a large but not homogeneous group of employees. As a result, the assessment form does not fit the job.

Disconnected from job descriptions – in many cases, the factors on the form are completely different from the factors on an employee’s job description, bonus criteria, or yearly goals. This can confuse employees and cause them to lose focus.

 Managers are not trained — in most organizations, managers are not trained on how to assess and give honest feedback.

Managers don’t know the employee — managers of large and global organizations, as well as newly hired and “transferred in” managers may be forced to do appraisals on employees they barely know.

A performance appraisal, which usually covers a period of six months to a year, involves a face-to-face meeting in which a manager evaluates an employee's past job performance. One downfall of a performance appraisal is that it doesn't always facilitate collaboration between employers and employees.

  

Thank you for reading my blog, I really appreciate it.  If you are interested in more, please click - http://pforpeoplemgt.hpage.com/