How To Set Career Goals (With Examples)

Career goals allow you to get what you want in your career. Even if every plan doesn’t work out exactly as you hope it will, determining objectives keeps your focus clear.

Whether you want to create your career goals or you want to update them, we’ll go over how to set short and long-term goals, provide some short-term and long-term goals examples, and why setting career goals are important.

Key Takeaways:

• Establishing what things you’d like to accomplish professionally can help you become a more effective and driven employee in the long and short term.

• Without career goal setting, it can be difficult to see any progress that you have made within your career.

• When creating a career goal plan you should be realistic, make the goals specific, and create a game plan for completing the goals.

What are career goals?

A career goal is an objective that you pursue in your professional life. They’re clear statements of what you want to achieve and an understanding of how you plan to get there. Goals can vary significantly between individuals.

Specific career goals can even differ between two individuals in the same industry. Take a lawyer, for instance. One employee of a law firm may have a long-term career goal of making a measurable positive impact on their community. Another is motivated by the eventual end goal of making as much money as possible. Both are working the same job, but they have very different career goals.

How to set your career goals

Establishing goals can be stressful, but doing so can improve your performance and happiness at work. To set your goals you should align your goals with your values and needs and what goals would increase your agency, competency, and sense of belonging.

Here is a more detailed list of how to set your career goals:

1. Align your goals with your values and needs. Many goals are rooted in some sort of purpose. When that purpose is tied to your values, it adds an extra layer of strength and resilience to your pursuit. It gives your goal a greater purpose beyond its material or abstract reasons. The goal becomes a part of who you are or who you want to be.

   Additionally, your values will be related to your needs. These needs can be anything that is necessary for you to accomplish a healthy life, whether these are social needs, financial needs, or personal needs. When your goals are targeted to your needs, you can be sure you are pursuing something that would be difficult to live without.

2. Consider goals that increase your agency, competency, and sense of belonging. A recent theory in psychology called Self-Determination Theory (SDT) presents the idea that motivation is rooted in our innate need to feel we have a sense of control over our lives. This is built around three core factors:

   • Agency. This is your feeling that you have direct control over your actions. You feel that you are able to make decisions because you have choices you can pursue.

   • Competency. This involves how you feel about your skills and capabilities. The more competency you have in certain areas of your life, the better you feel about handling challenges that arise there.

   • A sense of belonging. We are social creatures, and introverts and extroverts alike require some sense of feeling connected to others. How that manifests is different in everyone, but all of us have an innate need to feel like how we want to live our lives will be accepted by our community.

   Using the SDT framework, you can increase your motivation to accomplish goals by considering how they help you achieve agency, competence, and a sense of belonging.

3. Use SMART Goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Each step is a way to frame your goals so that you set yourself up for success:

   • Specific. A mistake that people make when setting goals is making their objectives too broad to be achieved. Deciding that your long term-goal is to be happier or be rich doesn’t speak much to the details of what this endeavor will entail. Instead, consider what will make you feel happier or richer, and create an outline for how you plan to get there.

     Specificity makes it easier to follow the path that leads to meeting your goal.

4. Measurable. Once you have a specific goal in mind, it helps to be able to measure its development. It will make your goal more real. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics can help you monitor your progress. They can be either quantitative or qualitative in their analysis. These measurements in turn help you evaluate further courses of action and keep you focused on building up towards your end goal.

5. Achievable. One of the key aspects of goal-setting is being realistic about what you’re trying to accomplish. Many failed career objectives, usually short-term, are due to a lack of realism. A goal that’s out of reach from the start likely won’t be achieved successfully.

   Imagine you take on the short-term goal to become fluent in Spanish in the next three months without any prior experience. Becoming fluent in a language in this timeframe is nearly impossible. The task is far too large to be done successfully, which will leave you feeling discouraged and defeated.

   Setting realistic goals is crucial for meeting your short-term objectives.

6. Relevant. You will want your goals to speak to your current situation. This is where aligning your goals with your values helps. Your goals are something that makes sense in the bigger picture of your life, in this case, your professional life.

7. Time-bound Setting an end to your goal gives you something to strive for, instead of some abstract “soon” or “eventually”. Your time period will want to be realistic, and don’t be afraid to add a little extra time to factor in all the unknown variables that come with life.

SMART goals are not perfect, and everyone can use them in their own way, but they provide a good starting point when setting your goals.

8. Break goals down into smaller steps. This helps you focus and stay in control of your actions. Regardless if it is a short or long-term goal, you will need to break down the goal into smaller actions that build up upon one another over time.

   It can help to monitor progress by focusing on small steps. While your goal is the bigger picture, each step acts as a new pixel added to the image, that over time leads to your end result.

9. Create a game plan. Similar to SMART goals, you need a plan. Strong planning skills account for many professionals meeting their long and short-term career goals. Once you’ve decided what you want to accomplish, you need to figure out how to do it.

   Deciding on the steps of your plan for how to achieve your goals include:

   • Establishing a timeline for completion

   • Creating specific milestones

   • Outlining the smaller steps toward meeting the goal

10. Take on new challenges. The point of working towards a goal is to challenge yourself. The things that come easiest to you aren’t the situations that make you grow and improve as an employee. It’s difficult tasks and objectives that help your career in the long run.

    Don’t shy away from a long or short-term goal that’s challenging to you because that’s probably the one you should go for.

11. Be positive and flexible. You never know what life will throw at you. Whether it be personal, financial, or professional hurdles, you’re going to face some form of difficulty when it comes to meeting your goals. This can be especially true of long-term goals that may span over multiple years.

    Be open to changes that come your way, adapt your plan of action to work towards your goals, and keep up a positive attitude. Perseverance and optimism are the two magic ingredients of accomplishing any long or short-term goal.

Short-term goals vs. long-term goals

When you set your goals, one of the most important things to consider is how long will it take for you to achieve your goal.

Both short-term and long-term goals play an important role in your career development. When you set your career goals, you will want to consider the differences between the two:

• Short-term goals. These are goals that can be accomplished anywhere from one week to one year. They are smaller in scope and they may or may not be used to build up to larger long-term goals.

• Long-term goals These goals are aimed to be accomplished between two to five years, or even beyond. Long-term goals are more complicated and required multiple smaller steps along the way.

Knowing the difference between short and long-term goals will help you as you decide to set your own goals.

Examples of short-term career goals

Many people think of short-term goals as stepping stones to meet the bigger targets you have in the long term. They’re realistic things, and you can accomplish them in a couple of months to a year with a definitive endpoint. Short-term goals can be attached to a grander scheme or be stand-alone objectives to better yourself and your work.

Review the following list of short-term career goals to see if any of them can be a helpful challenge for you.

1. Learn a new skill. While learning a skill is a process that you’ll have to keep up with beyond the time boundaries you set for your short-term goal, it can be a great choice to get the ball rolling. Think about the industry you work in and what position you currently have. Seek out skills that will be beneficial to this role.

   For example, if you work in advertising but don’t have a lot of experience with marketing on Instagram, you could take an online course focusing on this platform specifically. Learning a new skill can be a useful short-term goal for keeping your mind sharp and improving your resume’s qualifications.

2. Make a professional website. Having a digital impact and identity can be very important to your professional success. A potential employer or client interested in knowing more about who you are and the work you’ve done will turn to the web for more details. Creating a website can improve your professional appearance and make you more accessible to new opportunities.

   Examples of where to make a website include:

   • Squarespace Website Builder

   • Wix

   • Weebly

   • WordPress

3. Take a class to improve your communication. Communicating effectively is a huge part of a business running smoothly. Improving your communication skills can enhance your workplace relationships and productivity. In addition to meeting the necessary goals collectively as a team, communicating effectively with your supervisors and co-workers can also help you down the line in your career.

   Examples of courses that help with communication skills include:

   • Alison Communication Courses

   • Study.com Interpersonal Skills Course

   • Coursera Successful Negotiation Skills

4. Read a book relevant to your field. Reading books relevant to the position you work in is a practice that can help your learning abilities expand and gather new information about emerging topics in your field. Committing to a book is an excellent short-term goal because the length of time it will take is defined by the number of pages. There’s a clear point of completion and a wealth of knowledge to receive that can improve your work.

5. Earn a certification. Earning a certification isn’t as intense as earning a degree which is why it’s a great short-term goal. Certifications can often help you earn a pay raise or help get you a promotion. It’s also a great way to help gain some new skills. Earning certifications also helps you track your progression toward your end goal.

6. Improve work relationships. Improving your work relationships can help you improve your attitude and work environment. A great way to improve your relationship with a coworker is to practice good communication and offer to help them when you can.

Examples of long-term career goals

Long-term goals take more planning, commitment, and time than short-term. They’re a trajectory point for where you want your career to go in the coming years, as opposed to months. Long-term career goals are broader than short-term ones. They don’t have a defined timeline and may take many years to reach.

Consider the following popular long-term career goals.

1. Earn a degree. While a college degree does have a distinct timeline, it qualifies as a long-term goal because it takes many years and a lot of dedication to complete. Attending college and receiving a degree at any level is the first long-term goal that most people set in anticipation of securing their future careers.

2. Getting a promotion. This is a common long-term goal in the professional world. Receiving a promotion is an honor that describes your work ethic and strong performance over the years with your employer. It shows a distinction that you’ve been successful at your job and is a good barometer to measure your professional accomplishments. Working your way towards meeting this milestone can take anywhere from one year to a few.

3. Get published. Getting a scholarly journal, article, or book published can be a considerable accomplishment in many fields. It’s a long-term goal that can be off-putting to many professionals because of the effort and time it takes to complete it.

   You may not be an expert writer, but you could be an expert in the information you have to tell. If you work in an industry or niche that could have a readership, consider dedicating some time to the pursuit of getting your written work published.

4. Attain a leadership position. Being offered a leadership role within your company demonstrates a readiness to take on more responsibility for managing other associates. Becoming a supervisor in your industry can take longer than getting a yearly salary increase. But, it’s an excellent long-term goal to set because it can end with you receiving perks such as more professional freedom, decision-making duties, and a potential pay raise.

5. Learn a new language. Taking the time to learn a new language takes time. It’s not something you can pick up overnight. Learning a new language can also help advance your career because it could open up new opportunities in other countries.

6. Retire. Being able to retire is a long-term goal most people want. To be able to retire, you need to have enough savings to support you. Most people retire between the ages of 65 and 70. To have enough money by this age, you should set up a savings account or put money into a 401(k) if your employer offers one.

Why is goal-setting important?

Planning and goal-setting are important considerations to make in your career because they’ll give you insight into whether you’re doing your job well enough to meet these personal expectations. Thinking about what you want to accomplish, in the short-term, and eventually in the long-term, makes you a more prepared, strategic, and focused employee.

Without setting goals, you can never be positive about how far you’ve come. They tell you how well you’re doing, growth-wise, and what areas you may be lacking in. Meeting short-term goals can be a rewarding encouragement for your performance. Accomplishing long-term goals can shape what your professional future will look like.

Career goals FAQs

1. How do I decide my career goals?

   Decide your career goals by determining your values, your needs, and your wants. All three will help you build a path rooted in your life.

   Your values are what define your personal and professional philosophies. Knowing these values will act like guiding lights that point you in a general direction of fulfillment. Your needs help you be more specific and relevant to your career goals.

   Needs can range from material needs, such as having a home and stable income, to more introspective needs, such as feeling like you can support your family. Finally, wants are anything that you find interesting or desirable, even if they are not necessary in your life.

2. What are examples of typical career goals?

   Examples of typical career goals include:

   • Obtaining a leadership role.

   • Starting your own business.

   • Learning new technical skills.

   • Building an expansive professional network.

   • Hitting certain targets for sales or earnings.

   • Becoming an expert in a specific field.

3. What is a good professional goal?

   A good professional goal is anything that helps you fulfill your values. Your professional life will feel more significant if it is tied to your values. Aligning your goals with your values establishes a stronger connection to your sense of purpose.

4. How do you determine short-term and long-term goals?

   Determine short and long-term goals based on realistic expectations. Consider the size of your goal and how it has to be broken down into small steps. Think about how long it will take to reach your end goal and be aware that distractions or challenges will slow you down along the way.

5. What are tips for setting career goals?

   Some tips for setting career goals include:

   • Pick goals you are passionate about and you want to achieve.

   • Be specific with your goals.

   • Reward yourself when you accomplish a goal.

   • Tell others about your goal to help hold yourself accountable.

References

1. University of California – SMART Goals: A How To Guide

2. Harvard Business Review – 5 Ways to Set More Achievable Goals

3. U.S. Office Of Personnel Management – Career Development

Author

Sky Ariella

Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.