Where do you see yourself in five years?

• Consistency with the rest of the interview. If you said you want to learn to solve varied problems and then announce you will start a company in two years, something does not add up.
• Your grasp of the path inside a firm. Knowing what a consultant does after two or three years, when they start supervising and handling part of the client relationship, shows you did your research.
• Your sincerity. Interviewers know many consultants leave after a few years, and have sometimes considered it themselves. Swearing you will make partner in fifteen years convinces nobody.

1. 1

   Talk about what you want to have learned

   Frame your projection in skills and responsibilities rather than titles: running a workstream alone, supervising a junior, holding a meeting with a director at the client.
2. 2

   Place yourself in the firm over the visible horizon

   At three to five years it is reasonable and believable to see yourself still in consulting, with more autonomy. Say so, if that is what you think.
3. 3

   Own what you do not know

   You can say you have no fixed plan beyond that, and give the criteria that will guide your choice: the kind of topics, the learning, the people. That is a grown-up answer.
4. 4

   Keep a genuine interest as a reference point

   A sector or kind of problem that attracts you gives your answer a direction without boxing you in.

"In five years I hope to still be in consulting, at a level where I run part of the project and supervise one or two younger consultants. What I am after first is the first three years: learning to structure a problem I know nothing about, to defend an analysis in front of someone far more experienced than me, and to see enough sectors to know which ones really interest me.

Beyond that I would rather be honest: I have no fixed plan. I have a strong interest in energy, which comes from my internship, and I would like to move towards it project by project. But I know that what I find interesting in three years will depend on what I have seen by then..."

This example is made up: it shows the tone and the construction, not a script to memorise. Your answer has to come from your own experience or from the data the interviewer gives you.

• Announcing a plan unrelated to consulting, such as starting a company in the short term. The interviewer hears that you are here for a line on your CV.
• Promising you will stay your whole career and make partner. From a junior candidate it sounds like flattery.
• Answering "I do not know" and adding nothing. Uncertainty is acceptable, a lack of thought is not.
• Naming a precise title without being able to explain what it covers in the firm.