How to set short term and long term goals for your career?
Career goals are the road plan that will lead you to your desired career goal. Though not every plan works out precisely as you hoped, setting career goals keeps your attention on track. In the long term and short term, determining what you want to achieve professionally may help you become a more productive and motivated employee. How to set career goals – long term career goals and short term career goals may seem pointless to you. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake. If you don’t prepare for the future, you may find yourself in a chaotic situation.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SETTING CAREER GOALS?
A career goal is a professional aim that you want to achieve. They’re unambiguous declarations of what you want to accomplish as well as a strategy for how you’ll get there. Individual goals may differ considerably.
Even within the same sector, two people’s career goals may be quite different. Take, for example, a lawyer. Long term career goals for one law firm employee could be to make a demonstrable beneficial effect on their neighbourhood. Another is driven by the desire to make as much money as possible in the end. Both have the same profession, yet their career goals are vastly different.
WHY IS SETTING CAREER GOALS IMPORTANT?
Planning and goal-setting are crucial considerations to make in your profession since they will reveal if you’re performing your job effectively enough to achieve these career goals. You’ll be a better prepared, strategic, and focused employee if you think about what you want to achieve in the short term and long term.
You can never be satisfied with how far you’ve come if you are not setting career goals. They inform you how well you’re progressing and where you may be falling short. Short term career goals may be a motivating way to improve your performance. Long term career goals may have a significant impact on your career destiny. A career action plan is a road map that will guide you from selecting a profession to working and excelling in it.
What’s the Difference Between Short Term Career Goals and Long Term Career Goals?
Short term career goals and long term career goals are the two types of goals that are commonly used. Short term career goals may be accomplished in six months to three years, whereas long term career goals take three to five years. In some situations, short term career goals may be accomplished in as little as three months, whereas long term career goals can take up to five years to fulfil.
To fulfil long term career goals, you must first complete a succession of short term career goals and then long term career goals. As an example, suppose you want to be a doctor, that may be one of your ultimate long term career goals, but you must first accomplish a few other tasks, such as completing college (four years), medical school (another four years), and a medical residency (three to eight years).
There are many short term career goals to accomplish before achieving those long term career goals. They include doing well on admission tests and applying to colleges, medical schools, and residency programmes. Because grades are important in attaining those goals, you’ll need to break down your short term career goals even more, such as obtaining a good grade point average.
7 Ways to Improve Your Chances of Achieving Your Goals
How to set career goals?
Your hard work will be the most important factor in your achievement, but if you don’t define your objectives properly, achieving them will be considerably more difficult. Setting career goals – short term career goals and long term career goals is a personal decision that is based on what is essential to you and what will help your professional development. Setting career goals may be stressful, but it can help you perform better and be happier at work. Your short term career goals and long term career goals must satisfy the following requirements:
- Make a list of your goals: “I want to be successful,” you may remark. Who doesn’t, after all? For one individual, success may include becoming the CEO of a business, while for another, it may entail being home from work by 6 p.m. every day. When establishing career goals, individuals often make the error of making their aim too wide to accomplish. Choosing long term career goals to be happy or wealthier doesn’t tell you anything about what this effort will involve. Instead, think of what will make you feel better or more prosperous, and develop a strategy to get there.
- Keep your expectations in check: One of the most important elements of setting career goals is being realistic about what you want to achieve. Setting career goals that are realistic is essential for achieving short term career goals. Long term career goals must be in line with your talents and capabilities. If you can’t sing or play an instrument, saying “I want to win a Grammy Award” is a recipe for disaster. A lack of reality is at the root of many unsuccessful career goals, most of which are short term. A goal that is out of reach from the beginning is unlikely to be met.
Assume you are setting a career goal – short term career goals of becoming proficient in Spanish in the next three months despite having no previous knowledge of the language. It’s almost difficult to become proficient in a language in this amount of time. The job is much too big to be completed properly, leaving you frustrated and disappointed.
- Make a gaming strategy: Many professionals achieve their long term career goals and short term career goals thanks to strong planning abilities. After you’ve determined what you want to achieve, you’ll need to figure out how to go about doing it. Choosing the stages of your strategy for achieving your objectives includes:
- Creating a timetable for completion.
- Establishing clear goals.
- Outlining the smaller actions that will lead to the achievement of the objective
Example: Sign up for a writing class, for example, if your aim is to become a writer.
- Be optimistic and flexible: It’s impossible to predict what life may throw at you. Whether it’s emotional, financial, or professional obstacles, you’ll encounter some level of difficulties in achieving your career goals. This is particularly true for long term career goals that may span many years. Be adaptable to changes, adjust your plan of action to achieve your career goals, and have a positive attitude. The two key elements for achieving any long term career goals or short term career goals are perseverance and optimism. If you come into obstacles that seem to be impeding your progress, don’t give up. Instead, adjust your objectives appropriately. Let’s say you can’t go to college full-time because you need to keep working. Although completing your bachelor’s degree in four years is unlikely, you may enrol part-time and take a little longer. Flexibility also entails being ready to let go of goals that are no longer important in order to focus your efforts on others.
- Take up new challenges: Working for a goal is all about pushing oneself. The circumstances that come naturally to you aren’t the ones that force you to develop and progress as a worker. Difficult tasks and goals are what will help you advance in your profession in the long term.
Don’t be afraid while setting career goals for yourself, be it long term career goals or short term career goals for yourself, since that’s usually the one you should aim for.
