Where will you be in 5 years? Don’t know? Me either

What do you see yourself doing five years from now?

It's an innocent enough question. It's also the kind of query that is common fare for most job interviews these days. In fact, if you do Google search for the five most asked job interview questions it lands right near the top of most of the lists.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past that this was a valid job interview question.

Back in the pre-recession days, you set your career compass on the road ahead and the milestones practically fell into your lap. It usually started with: 1) Land first job; 2) Get job that pays more money; 3) Move up the ladder to a job with more responsibility; 4) Become the boss; 5) Retire.

But these are the days of reinvention. They are also the days when the marketplace has folks on steps three and four competing with those on the first step for jobs.

But as sure as anything, people doing interviews are still working from the same playbook. I've been asked more times than I care to recall what my goal is, or where do I see myself in five years?

In all honesty, if the past five years are any indication of the next five, I have little doubt there is no way to predict where any of us will be. My pat answer is that I want to be relevant. Throughout my career, I've been able to change roles and jobs to meet a variety of situations.

I'd love to still be doing website content work. Beyond being relevant in my field of interest, I have few other goals.

From here the interview playbook is pretty much predictable. For those of you who haven't been down this path before I spell them out for you.

Tell me about yourself. For this one you want to have the elevator resume ready to go. They just want the highlights, so think of it as an interview that only lasts as long as the average elevator trip.

Next is the old, "Why should we hire you?" It also comes in many forms including, "Why are you right for this job?" or "What distinguishes you from other candidates?"

This is a tricky one when you think about it. If you've made it into the room for an interview, obviously you've got a skill set they are looking for. And everybody always says they're willing to give 110 percent. Some folks even go the intangibles route as in "I've got skills that are tough to put on a resume but will add value to the company."

From here the list usually goes to "What do you know about the company?" "Tell me about a time you failed, or how did you recover from XYZ?" And then there is the "Why did you leave your last job?"

These are all pretty good questions, and you won't go to a formal interview without hearing most of them.

The other day, however, I had a conversation with a person who was looking to make a hire. It was part of the interview process, but instead of going off the script, we just talked. We threw topics out there and sounded our way through them.

Back in the day when I was involved in hiring, I did the same thing. I found people will tell you more about themselves in a conversation then you'll ever get from a list of standard questions.