This question is especially tough if you are at the beginning of your career, when your path is less clear and you may be unsure where you are headed. What's most important is to show that you have clear goals, and that the position you are interviewing for makes sense as a part of your trajectory. Make sure that the goals you state are not only compatible with, but directly related to, the role. Most interviewers are proud of their companies and are not interested in hiring someone who sees a job as merely a stepping stone to where they really want to be.

At the same time, hiring managers understand that no one aims to stay in a junior role forever. If you are interviewing for an entry-level position, talk about your passion for the industry and your interest in advancing in your field. If the company employs more senior people in the same area, you can talk about eventually gaining more responsibility and contributing more substantively to the organization. The one exception is that at a very small company, it can come across as aggressive to talk about moving up in the ranks-in this situation, focus on growing within the industry in general.