Mastering faculty interview questions: where do you see yourself in 5 years? Give a perfect answer!

hi there so a common question in faculty interviews and also for senior post positions is where do you see yourself in 5 years that is a pretty standard question that is often asked and it just asks do you have a vision for where you are going to go that is slightly more long term than just the next year or so or the next experiment so I think it's okay to start with some general points but then you also would need to be more specific so I think the general points can be some of the following

it could be I hope to have established myself in my field of science let's say environmental science or ecology and I hope to have made a solid track record of Publications in five years you could say I envision myself prioritizing mentoring and education the next generation of scientists this is definitely a good goal and it's part of your job I hope to have secured stable funding would be another one of those General statements and maybe some of this funding to be collaborative with my colleagues I will have established a solid and very good and productive

International scientific Network could be a general goal your goal could also be that my research has an impact on society and it could be really any of these these are just some suggestions but I think they are all very general good goals to mention that basically would be part of the lead in sentence of that answer basically and then you would transition to your you know specific goals and here's some thoughts on those now the first thing about the specific goals is that people want to know beyond these General goals do you have actually a

vision of how to get there and is that a realistic vision and do you know what you need and what you need to do in order to achieve these goals so that is quite another step from these General goals that I just mentioned and that definitely requires some thinking ahead of time I don't think you can come up with these answers on the spot during the interview so I think you need to prepare yourself for these answers and you know chart a course for basically you see yourself in a more long-term perspective so first of

all you would come up with a with a clear perspective of where you want to be specifically for example this could be I want to understand the role of microplastic pollution in um ecosystems terrestrial ecosystems and the soil for example or I want to really make a step change in our understanding of joint impacts of many simultaneous environmental drivers let's say for example or I really want to um have a better understanding of the role of micro risal funi in agriculture using state-of-the-art molecular ecology tools those are some examples of statements that are that much

much more specific they're not the titles of individual papers they describe a more specific research goal that is attainable over a period of maybe about 5 years plus so this is what you need to think through what is a realistic goal for you to achieve in about 5 years this doesn't need to be you know breakthrough type things it should be something ambitious but it should still be realistic people can see this is doable after 5 years of work and one very useful thing to think about is what is your really your long-term career goal

maybe your long-term career goal would be something to have a better understanding of soil biodiversity responses to Global change or something or a better understanding of global change effects on terrestrial effects on terrestrial ecosystems and then a subset of that would be more like the five-year goal and so that is very nice because then well you may have immediate goals for what is your next Grant uh but then you have a 5-year goal for what you want to achieve over the next 5 years and then you have also a more long-term goal where that feeds

into and so I think if you have these three worked out before the interview you're doing really well I think so I mean because this is not easy I mean you would say my first grant I would write on that it's a specific Grant it's a three-year project and that is going to result in like one paper or a few paper three papers then the five-year uh goal is larger than that of course it has a bigger topic and maybe several grants which will feel feed into that and then your long-term goal is maybe where

you see your career go what is going to be the mark that you leave what are going to be the couple sentences that are going to be in a textbook on ecology or whatever um from your work in the end that maybe is a bit more uncertain because things can change of course and should if they're interesting they're likely to change but I think it doesn't hurt to sort of have this vision for what is going to be the first Grand that I write that is also question that's often asked what is your sort of

five-year medium term this is always worded differently a little bit of course it doesn't need to be The Five-Year Plan but what is it like your immediate couple year plan until you maybe earn tenure and uh if you have a tenure system and then afterwards what are you going to long-term career plans so I think it's good to have them sort of in your mind's eye but is also very good in answering that question is in the specific way come up with a way how you can achieve a part of your goal or an interesting

part of that five-year perspective in collaborating with members from your future Department that is interviewing you and that adds a substantial amount of value to your answer because then people can see how you have thought about how you could connect with people that are there not just a single fighter single Pi doing their own thing heads down and through with their program but how are they going to be a valuable member of the departmental team and that means in the end you can say well I can Envision something like a Research Unit on this broader

topic that would feed into my five year 10 year research goal that is also going to be interesting for other uh research members and in your department for example and these members could be and then you name them I think that that is an optimal answer um that you can do I mean you can do that research it doesn't take that long to figure out who in the department does what you come up with an idea that you are playing around with anyway that is a broader scope of what you're working on maybe it's more

organism groups maybe it's across different ecosystems maybe it's using totally different approaches adds value basically to your research question you're pursuing or your research program and it adds value to the Department makes the department overall better then it is very good if you emphasize what you need in order to achieve this you know maybe you need access to a field site maybe you need access to certain equipment maybe you need to have certain colleagues with certain expertise around and of course ideally this happens to be just at the place where you're applying because you have

done the research you know there is this field side you know there is this equipment in a core facility you know there are the colleagues with just the expertise that you need to do that this makes people feel that you are going to be making optimal use of all the various things that this particular department has to offer so you make the department better you make yourself better everybody wins this is what people want to hear and then of course you you would State why this is important to do you know maybe this will help

us transition towards some more sustainable agriculture maybe this will help us mitigate climate change or Global change and this is why there is going to be a high degree of Interest and then the last bit that feeds directly um into what youve just said about why does this so important is how will you fund it have you thought through what instruments are available in that particular University country state or whatever um that could be used to fund this kind of endeavor have you got an a mental image of the funding landscape of this country do

you know what's generally possible within the major funding a agencies of that country that you're applying for and so an example statement could be like this of course this can be embellished with a to be a couple minutes long but you could say something like that my long-term goal is to achieve such and such and during my first 5 years here I want to make decisive progress towards the Milestone of this and that I can engageing collaborations with the other department members because they would help me do this and that and increase the scope in

such and such a way to help me achieve part of these goals and this would also have the added benefit of adding this particular question approach Theory or whatever it is to the portfolio of the department to achieve this I will need to make use of several facilities that are locally available like the core facility XY and the field side ABC or whatever it is and this is important because Society really really needs answers to the question of whatever it is and this is why I believe there is a really good chance to get this

work funded by funding agency X I think if you can work this out before the interview you have the perfect answer to that question and it is an important question with that good luck with thinking about this with your interview getting the job offer and thanks for watching see you next time bye