Nobody is actually curious about your fifth year. They are working out whether their first year is a step you want or a detour you will leave. This maps the difference.
Nobody is actually curious about your fifth year. They are working out whether year one of their job is a step you wanted anyway or a detour you will leave. Both stock answers fail: "wherever the company takes me" gives them nothing to offer you, and "your job" has never once landed.
Put each ambition on a five-year line, or rule it off your path entirely.
Front-loaded, back-loaded, hollow in the middle or continuous. The shape is what they read.
Three sentences built from your own map: far, then near, then the link between them.
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"Where do you see yourself in five years" sounds like a question about ambition. It is a question about retention and fit, asked in the least direct way available. What they are working out is narrow and practical: if I invest a year training you, is that year a step you wanted anyway, or a holding pattern you will leave the moment something better appears.
Which is why both stock answers fail. "I want your job" is a threat. "I am open to wherever the company takes me" says you have no direction, so nothing they offer can be a step toward it. Both leave them exactly where they started.
The answer that works has a shape: something specific far out, something specific near in, and a visible line between them that runs through the role on the table. Most people have all three and have never laid them next to each other, so the line is invisible even to them.
The map
When do you want each of these, honestly?
Place only what you actually want. "Not on my path" is a real answer and is often the most clarifying thing on the page. You do not need to place them all.
If what you actually want is not on the list, name it and say when.