I just interview nine students from Neumont University last week, and I just read this BusinessWeek article last night.

I was chagrined to find out the first "stupid question" on the list is one I asked all nine of the students and which I frequently ask interviewees.

The question is "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Liz Ryan refers to this question as "the great-granddaddy of goofy questions", "dumb", and a "time-waster". She also said that interviewers who use it are "hidebound". Man, that pretty much ruined my Friday.

But wait...there might be a way out for me. The reason she gives for it being stupid ist that "No company will guarantee you a job for five years, much less a career path. To construct such a plan for yourself, you'd have to make predictions about industries, companies, and your likes and dislikes that could only serve to constrain your choices. And in any case, why is it so all-fired important to have a dang career plan in mind?"

The thing is, that's not why I ask the question. I don't ask the question because I think these people might be working for me in five years, I ask it because I want to know what kind of people they are. In my case, I was interviewing programmers. Anyone who has hired and managed developers knows there are two kinds. The first is a coder at heart, and would prefer to have headphones on and write code 20 hours per day. In the other four hours per day he watches the original Star Wars that he ripped from VHS, memorizes lines from Monty Python episodes, and plays networked video games.

The second likes programming, but he really wants to be a project manager and maybe start his own company someday.

Each type of programmer has their pros and cons. The one that leans towards project management might be doing so because they don't feel completely confident about their programming abilities. The heads down coder might not work well with clients. The project manager might be able to help you land deals and manage a group of the coder types. The coder types might be able to get projects cranked out faster and in better form than the other type.

I was looking for at least one project manager type programmer, and so I asked all the interviewees the question "where do you see yourself in five years?" because I wanted to identify whether each person leaned towards one side or the other. And it worked. I had interviewees who answered definitely one way, and some who answered definitely the other. In the end I chose three of the project management types and one of the coder types. I probably would have chosen more of the coder types but the PM types seemed to be completely capable coders, so I think it will work out fine.

I'm proud to say I did not ask any of them "If you could be a can of soup, what kind of soup would you be?" or "What are your weaknesses?" or "What would your past managers say about you?", although I did ask "What intersted you about MWI enough to come to this interview?" I think that is indeed a bad question, because everyone knows how to and how not to answer it. Nobody is going to say "Because I need a job" even though that might be the truth.

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