The importance of setting career goals

Goals can ease your progress through your career plan in so many ways. They can:

• keep you focussed and motivated
• help you measure your progress and identify milestones reached
• match your career aspirations to job opportunities
• tell you when your career plan should be altered

Career goals are stepping stones. Without them, you can lose track of your career path.

Identifying your ultimate career goal

So what is an ultimate career goal? Is it the conclusion of your lifelong career ambitions or some target to reach in the near future? The word ‘ultimate’ might suggest an end point, but realistically your priorities may change over the next year, five years, or longer. Your ultimate career goal is therefore the one that matters now. It is your main focus for the next year, and perhaps longer.

So how do you identify your ultimate career goal? Whether you already have an idea of what that goal is or you’re just starting out, here are four steps that may help:

1. Consider your passions and interests. What excites and motivates you? What activities do you enjoy? What subjects do you like to read and learn about? What job tasks have brought you a sense of satisfaction?
2. Look at your skills and strengths. What are you good at? What talents or abilities do you have? These might be soft skills like leadership or communication, or technical skills like computer programming.
3. What are your work values? What matters most to you in your career? Is it enjoying your job and feeling valued by your employer, having a good work-life balance, financial stability and job security, or working your way up to a leadership role?
4. Research careers that interest you. Learn about the qualifications, skills, and experience required for these roles. Talk to people who work in these careers too. It’s never too early to start building a network of useful contacts.

The information you gather from the above steps should point to the type of career that suits your interests, skills, work values, and personal strengths.

But what if your ultimate career goal isn’t to land a particular job? It could be to have a comfortable retirement pot, to earn enough to afford your dream home, to work for an employer who matches your personal values, to move into a manager or director role, or to have a job that fits around your out-of-work responsibilities and activities. Considering the above factors can help you clarify that type of goal too.

Mapping out the steps to achieve your goal

Your ultimate career goal may be achievable in one year, five years, or more. Whatever the timeline, you can begin to map out the steps to achieve that goal right now. The easiest way to do that is to create a career plan. Here’s how.

Consider the ‘Now’

What qualifications, experience, and skills do you already have? What responsibilities and living needs do you have? For instance, are you a parent or carer? What are your likes, dislikes, and personal beliefs? Building a clear picture of your current situation will make it easier to work out what you need to do to reach your career goal.

Flesh out your ultimate career goal

Write down as many details as you can about your career goal. That might be the maximum age you want to be when you achieve your goal, the salary you want to earn, or the impact of reaching your goal.

Decide on your stepping stones

Or in other words, work out what you need to do to achieve your goal. For instance:

• Do you need additional qualifications, skills, or work experience to land your dream job? You can find out from the job description for that role.
• To arrive at the right pension pot, do you need to work for your current or another employer for a certain number of years at a particular salary?
• Do you need to move to a different location to land a job with your preferred employer?

Another way to approach this is to write down the differences between your current situation and where you want to be once you’ve achieved your ultimate career goal.

Set your goals

You already have an ultimate career goal. Now it’s time to set smaller goals that will move you closer to that end result. Break these goals down into short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. Short-term goals are to be achieved during the next three to six months, mid-term goals up to two years, and long-term goals for five years or longer.

With each goal, write down:

• the steps you need to take to reach that goal
• any missing experience or education that you need
• a deadline for each goal and step

Ideally, you’ll create a career plan for one year at a time and check back on your progress every week or month. At the end of the year, you can assess how far you’ve come, decide whether your ultimate career goal has changed, and make any alterations for the next year.

Not sure how to create those goals? Read How SMART goals can improve your job search.

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