I was recently involved in an interview with a 50 year old guy applying for a fairly senior position.
He talked a great game. Every answer that he gave was great, almost as if he knew just what I needed to hear. And he had exciting personal goals for the future. My first ‘blink’ on this guy was that he was great. He looked the part.
The only problem was, once the gloss was stripped away, the guy hadn’t really accomplished much in his career up to that point. I’m talking about tangible, real contributions and accomplishments backed up with hard evidence and numbers and glowing reviews by past bosses.
I took a pass on the guy for that reason.
I have found that in an interview setting, you have to try to ignore your first impressions and dig for hard evidence of real accomplishments and personal resourcefulness.
The best indicator of future performance is past performance. And personal goals just mean you haven’t done it yet.