What will you be when you grow up?

The finding that high aspiration has a direct link to future career success has emerged from a national survey tracking children born in 1958. Researchers at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, part of the Institute of Education, used an extraordinary set of unpublished essays in which almost 14,000 youngsters aged 11 predicted their own future, and compared them with their real occupations aged 42.

The study showed that, once differences of class and ability were accounted for, children did better if they set themselves lofty goals. The analysis revealed that, even if a child is poor or less able, having high career ambitions at around the time they leave primary school means they are significantly more likely to have a professional job – though not necessarily the one they predicted.

Of those children with professional aspirations at 11, ranging from vets and lawyers to architects, half were in professional occupations at the age of 42, compared with only 29% of those with no professional aspirations. This apparent ambition effect was clear among both boys and girls, and among those with manual and professional family backgrounds alike.

The ‘killer’ interview question?

So, if evidence suggests that high achievers form goals as a child; why not ask about primary age aspirations in an adult interview situation? The standard, “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” question has always been an unsatisfactory one: less likely to result in a truthful, insightful view on a candidate’s future aspirations and abilities and more likely to tell you what the candidate thinks you want to hear. Conversely, the “What did you want to be when you grew up?” question can be asked in any number of ways (“What did you want to be when you were at high school/a university student/in your first job?”) and can be expected to have genuine value. It stands to reason that you’ll get a more reliable response to a question about the past than you will by asking a candidate to imagine the future.

Are behaviours telling?

This sort of re-examination of the past can yield a range of telling information about a candidate. In interviews I always try to look for patterns of behaviour, i.e. is a candidate doing what they have always done, or have they had any major career shifts? By looking at how much change an individual includes in their life, and how much they are creatures of habit, we can see what sort of behaviours they are likely to persist in throughout their career.

What else does the past tell us about the present?

I find that the best interview questions are the creative ones, and asking about a candidate’s distant and not-so-distant past can bring out some of the most illuminating answers. It’s up to the individual interviewer to find the questions that will identify whether a candidate’s dynamic will be right for the team, but a few of the past-present questions that have worked for me are:

Clue: Look for key life moments that might have contributed to the candidate’s working persona.
Sample question: “What have been the ‘eureka moments’ in your life?”
Sample answer: “When I identified a bug in my first computer game, I suddenly knew I wouldn’t be happy unless I was a programmer.”

Clue: Find out how the candidate coped when his/her ambitions needed to be realigned.
Sample question: “What did you do when you realised your first choice career was over?”
Sample answer: “They told me I’d never play scrum half again so I retrained as an Oracle consultant and took up competitive tiddlywinks in my spare time.”

Clue: Discover how the candidate responds to failure.
Sample question: “What did you learn from your failure to win ‘Young Businessperson of the Year’?”
Sample answer: “I analysed the winner’s strengths and weaknesses, and used this knowledge to pip him at the post for a graduate traineeship the following year.”

Make sure the past pushes you forward and doesn't hold you back. For more hints and tips on building teams or building your career, contact Trevor at trevor@meadowsconsulting.com.