Don’t Answer These Recruiter’s Questions!

When a recruiter asks you where you see yourself in next five years you shouldn’t answer. The same with the question – why did you change your job so often. If someone asks this question still in 2016 it means that that person doesn’t know what time we are living in. If you are a manager of recruiters that asked these questions you should at least talk to them and show them the online landscape of 2016.

Let’s go briefly through some facts:

Facebook was created in 2004,

Twitter two years later,

Instagram was born in 2010,

Snapchat one year later

and Musical.ly in 2014.

During the last 12 years many game-changers appeared, but changes appear now faster and faster. We don’t need to wait a decade for something that may change online business again.

When something new appears everyone in the online industry must be aware. New platforms change a game or at least add something new; gives an opportunity. Affects everything – approach to marketing, brand building, online campaigns, the method of communication, content preparation and last but not least – the way we measure effectiveness and engagement – and there are only more and more metrics to understand. All that matters.

If you decide to go for longer vacations, like for 6 months, there is a great chance that you can come back to very changed landscape. You can miss some important changes that may take you out of the game and your brand as well.

We are living in global village. You heard this million of times. But do you really understand what it means? Let’s focus only on one thing. Global village means that 1500 km from here there is someone who can do your job and for half of your salary. Which means that you can be jobless. You still have your great skills, wisdom, knowledge, experience but you are more expensive. The economy is cruel.

Last but not least, we are living in the era of End Of Jobs (by the way I recommend a book with the same title by Taylor Pearson). Which means, that in some garage somewhere (potentially in the US) there is someone who is writing a code that will become an application that will take many of our jobs, also the ones who thanks to the global village wanted to take a jobs and earn half. For some software you pay once or you pay a monthly subscription but it’s still less than you have to pay for an employee. The economy is cruel.

All of these above (and I pointed only two things!) mean that if you really have to answer that question, what you will be doing in 5 years from now should be – I don’t know. Even the recruiter doesn’t know. She or he also doesn’t know if she or he will still be needed in next 5 years. Potentially many of them won’t. There is a chance that some great software will replace recruiters. You really think it’s not possible? If so, please try to imagine how many people think the same and where they are now.

This might lead you to another question. There’s quite a big chance that in the future people will have to change not only there job but even the industry they are working in more often than it was before. You are rather safe if you are programmer or natural born entrepreneur (ok, we can list few more jobs here). But if you do a job as a marketer, teacher, translator, recruiter, etc. you should prepare your plan B and C.

It would behoove recruiters to update their question to fit  2016. It looks that software is easier to update and if course, the economy is cruel.