What are your professional goals for the next 5 10 years?

Answer 1

It depends where you are on the career ladder! Assuming that you have a few years of management experience, and you are in your mid to late 20s or early 30s, your answer would appear wise if you base you answer on the below philosophy.

In this day and age of rapid economic and technological developments, and regulatory changes, planning anything for more than 3 years is fraught with danger. It is very likely that your idea of 'tomorrow' will change before 'tomorrow' actually arrives, hence your focus should be on immediate to mid foreseeable future. Anything more than that should be ambitions or rather aspirations that would keep you going. In my opinion anything more than a 5 year plan should be strictly at a very high level (philosophical) in nature. For example don't aim at becoming a CFO, rather target a management position that is equivalent of a CFO position.

Given this, your focus should be on how good your competencies are in the present day and how you may further improve them. What kind of initiatives you'd take to enhance your skill set that would allow you to take on a wider range of responsibilities and bring you closer to your long term professional targets.

Obviously, if you are already in a senior position and have developed expertise in specific field/area then your professional goals will not be as vague as above and you would have a very good idea on what exactly needs to be done to get to the next level. For example a typical commercial manager can progress further in the field by acquiring a law degree, and hence a 5 year objective. Similarly a doctor is pretty much stuck in the profession of medicine and economic, technological and/or regulatory dynamics does not add significant level of ambiguity in their career progression. A doctor would exactly know what additional qualifications/experience is required to gain the expertise that would push them to the next step.

To sum up - if you are a young individual then your aims, ambitions and aspirations should be more philosophical rather than specific, you should exhibit flexibility in your objectives (I know it sounds strange but trust me it's not). Senior professionals should have hard lined, specific, spelled out to the last dot objectives. An experienced professional cannot afford to be vague in their goals and objectives, it's probably too late to be vague.

Answer 2

I am planning to become a higher level position in my office. But I should have held the Master degree in my related field. In my view some organization prefers the candidates of holding master degree but the one who has much experienced than holder of master degree without experiences will be get more chance to get a better job.

I have lots of experience but I haven't got the master degree and my English is still poor. I am now learning English whenever I have a time.