Setting Career Goals
People who are highly successful in their chosen field of work do not become successful by accident. They have deliberately chosen to set goals in the path of their career and to plan out effective methods for achieving those goals. Where do you want to be five years from now? Could you see yourself doing the same thing but for a different company? Do you wish to stay with the same company but apply for a higher level position? Do you want to make a radical career change and try something completely different? No matter which route you choose, you need to have an effective method for setting goals in your career path.
Define Your Ideal Job
Before you start setting goals, you need to evaluate what you want to get out of your job. Write out a list and try to be as specific as possible. Spend some time thinking about which job duties you enjoy doing the most and research which jobs would allow you to spend most of your day doing these things. Next, visualize where you want to be in one year. If you have your eye on your bosses' job, for example, do some research on personal development classes could you take or relevant books could you read to help prepare you for this kind of a career move.
Identify Obstacles
Once you decide what your ideal position is, evaluate what your biggest obstacles to overcome would be. Is it lack of public speaking experience? Do you need to update your computer skills? Find out if these jobs would require further specialized training or if you would qualify for them right now. Perhaps there are additional tasks you could take on in your current position that would help prepare you for a new role.
Don't Go It Alone
Seek out a career mentor, preferably someone with experience in the same general field as you. A mentor is simply someone who helps to guide you on your journey. They can offer valuable advice and expertise based on what they have learned along their own journey. Why go it alone, when you can learn from someone older and wiser? Mentors can be great for helping you to answer difficult questions such as when is it worth it to invest in more skills training or university education or to give you tips on how to win promotions in your current workplace. Granted there are some lessons you will have to learn the hard way but it's certainly not necessary to start completely from scratch. So swallow your pride and ask someone's advice.
Get Specific
Make up a list of accomplishments you want to achieve in the next 5 years and then write out list of thing you will have to do to be successful. Next, use this list to help you write out a detailed plan of action with specific items on it such as researching the costs of different training programs, putting aside X number of dollars a month for tuition, and finding out how your boss got where he/she is today. The more detailed your plan of action, the better. This is your roadmap to a better future so be sure to highlight every speed bump you will encounter or sharp turn you will have to make.
Evaluate Priorities
For setting long-term goals for where you want to be ten and fifteen years down the road, give some serious consideration to your salary needs and expectations. If your plan is to own your own home within ten years and the highest paid people in your line of work are earning $25,000 a year then you will need to adjust either your career goals or your expectations. If you plan to have three kids in quick succession and you choose a career that requires regular extensive travel such as flight attendant or consultant, you may need to do some re-evaluating of your main goals or find a different way to achieve them.
If your career goal is radically different than where you are right now, you may want to consider doing volunteer work that is somehow related to your dream job. This will look great on your resume and also shows you are serious about making a change since you are willing to devote your free time to this activity.
Self-Improvement
Try to get in the habit of setting long-term personal development goals for yourself that would help you be more qualified for any position. This could mean enrolling in a gym to improve your overall health and decrease the number of sick days you have to take. It could also mean taking up a new hobby that helps reduce your stress and brings out your creative side, or it could mean enrolling in a formal self-help book study complete with written exercises that help you learn how to deal more effectively with workplace challenges.
Changing Directions
Kenna was a 26 year old career woman who had completed her pharmacy degree two years ago and had worked as a pharmacist ever since. Having always loved chemistry and biology in high school, she had decided very early in life what she wanted to do for a career. She had somewhat of a rude awakening when she realized that counting pills and filling prescriptions was not what she wanted to do. At this point, Kenna decided to go back to school to complete her masters degree in pharmacy with the goal of teaching one day. Today she is an assistant pharmacy professor at a prestigious university and absolutely loves going to work each day. "I am now doing what I love: communicating with others. I never would have been happy counting pills the rest of my life." Kenna helped to make the transition from pharmacist to professor a smooth one by taking toastmasters classes on the weekends to learn how to project her voice to an audience and to help overcome her fear of public speaking.
Setting goals and even changing directions in the path of your career can be successfully accomplished if you evaluate what you want and then create a clear, detailed and realistic plan of action to get you there. Don't give up until you find the job that truly makes your heart sing.
