I was reading this thread when a question occurred: in most interviews, people get asked where they see themselves in X years time and other similar ambition-quantifying questions. But if a person is at their limit and says so, they get marked down. Why is this?
There are two answers to this.
One is that it is a stock question date from sometime B.C., and most likely a lot of interviewers have no idea why it exists in the first place. They do, however, know to mark you down if you don’t have any ambition.
But the real answer is that companies need people with ideas that will give them a competitive advantage. Ambitious people are more likely to have ideas because, well, they’re ambitious. Everybody knows they’re going to get a lot of competent drones (like me) that deliver what they’re supposed to, along with some incompetents and worse, but none of those are likely to drive up the stock price. It’s people who want to do more.
Note that it’s not really important how ambitious you are for yourself. It’s how ambitious you are for the welfare of the company.
It’s a trick question. If you have no ambition, they see you as a slacker who won’t have any motivation to work hard. If you show too much ambition, they worry you’ll be out looking for a better opportunity elsewhere before too long. You have to walk the fine line and answer in a way that says “I am motivated to work hard and stay with this company.”
The correct answer is, of course “in your chair”.
I actually know someone who a) used that line, b) got the job, and c) was indeed in his chair in five years’ time.
Well, if someone asked me that question I’d just tell the truth.
I’m not a fortune-teller.
If that doesn’t satisfy them, too bad. Anyone who thinks they are is a schmuck I wouldn’t want to hire anyway.
Ambition. Tricky subject. I think most employers don’t want to have to interview for that position again in another year or two. They want someone who will continue to add value to the position. They don’t like to have to train again, get acquainted with another employee, etc. It’s as big a hassle for them to replace people as it is for people to continually look for new jobs. I don’t think personal ambition is as much an issue as your willingness to stick with the company so they can promote from within.
I think enthusiasm for the job at hand is much more important than overall ambition. If I am hiring someone to work on a database, I would love to hear how they have always loved to work on databases, do a variation of it even as a hobby, read database books for fun etc.
Ambition implies that the individual wants to promote themselves within the company or elsewhere. If I am hiring someone for a technical type job I don’t really want to hear how they are using that as a stepping stone to be a project manager in 2 years and a VP in 5. It might be Ok in isolated cases but I would get really disturbed if everyone coming in the door was focused on future jobs rather than this one.
I have done hiring and I know many people that hire. The “In your position!” line is a gimmick and probably doesn’t come across well to the vast majority of people doing the hiring.
Good ambition is a prospective salesperson explaining how he will increase his own sales by 200% in the first year and has a plan how. Bad ambition is explaining how he plans on controlling the entire sales force within 5 years. Someobody is already in that job and probably likes it. Focus on the near future.