What are your career goals? Do you know how to set career goals?
There is one indisputable truth in life. If you want to accomplish something, setting goals is the best way to guarantee success.
We have numerous opportunities to set goals throughout our lives, plan a wedding, buy a house, pick furniture, and go on vacation. One of the best opportunities to set specific goals is when you’re job searching. By writing it down or typing it out, you can plan each action that needs to happen to achieve your goal.
Getting a new job is simple, but the process can be difficult and overwhelming. You can make it simpler by having a plan in place.
Start by answering this, “What are my career goals?”
What is a goal?
A goal is something you want the future to hold. It can be a need or a want. It can be something you want right now or something you are working towards in the future. 
The most popular career goal is deciding the type of profession you want to pursue throughout your career. Do you want to be a Doctor, Lawyer, Data governance, or something else? If you need help defining your career goals, give these tips a try.
It’s not enough to say you want to be an Environmental Scientist. You have to know what to do to get there. Defining your ultimate career goal will allow you to clarify your short-term career goals.
Create your SMART goal
You have to set goals in a precise way to help you reach them.
If you create goals using the SMART method, you can establish a clear path for what you need to do to hit the target.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
Tools for a strong job search
Setting goals, long or short, are an essential tool for a strong job search.
Knowing what to search for is challenging if you haven’t defined it. Once you start that search, you’ll need to explain your execution of goals through your resume.
Hiring managers or recruiters want to see resumes that have accomplishments. Suppose your previous job required you to produce $50,000 in quarterly sales. Many job seekers will put something similar like this on their resume: “Produced $50,000 in sales every quarter.”
Outstanding! But did you do it?
Technically, bringing in $50,000 in sales each quarter is a long-term goal. Meaning you had to do something every day to accomplish this. Maybe you broke up the job into small pieces. Setting a short-term goal to talk to 75 businesses weekly to close five sales would take you closer to achieving the long-term goal of getting $50,000 by the end of the quarter.
“What are your career goals?”
The first step to correctly answering “What are your career goals?” is, obviously, first having goals in an interview. Next is effectively communicating with the recruiter or hiring manager in an interview.
First, ensure you have a precise and concise description of your career goals. This description should be phrased so that strangers (people outside your career) can relate to and understand. Learn to express your career goals in a manner related to the company you’re applying to.
Next, be prepared to explain how you plan to achieve your career goals. Several hiring managers are trained to ask more in-depth questions during interviews. After stating your career goals, there may be a follow-up question to help the hiring manager learn more about you and your goals.
Finally, be prepared to demonstrate adaptability by discussing changing your short-term goals to reach the long-term ones, if necessary. Changing an individual step on a path is more manageable than building a new path.
Goals are a standard part of everyday life, whether we recognize it or not.
Taking the time to set SMART goals makes things easier, including your job search. Don’t waste your time applying for jobs that won’t make you happy.
Are you planning on landing a new job in the short term? We can help you with our professional resume writing services, cover letters, and interview coaching.
