Around 70% of people struggle to define clear career goals. Feeling stuck or uncertain in your career is a common feeling, as is feeling like you’re just in it for the money and it’s not fulfilling enough. But without career goals, it’s hard to get ahead in your professional plans because you don’t have a good idea of where to go let alone how to get there! Identifying your career goals also means helping you to create a future that also lines up with your passions, strengths and values, helping you get into careers that suit your needs and wants. But how can you chart this path?
Why Should You Have Career Goals?
Figuring out your career goals has a number of benefits:
- It let you prioritize opportunities that match what’s important to you
- It gives you a better sense of direction
- It improves both confidence and motivation
- It gives you clarity and a foundation for job search, promotions, and overall career path
Figuring out your goals starts with understanding your skills and interests. This is something that many people don’t reflect on, but they really should; not only will it help you clarify what you enjoy doing and are good at (and what you’re not so good at), but it helps to filter jobs, promotions, and can even help you design your resume better and have good answers for common interview questions.
Your Skills and Interests
First start by writing down your strengths. These can be both things you’re naturally good at and things you’ve worked on. Examples include being good at communication, strong digital literacy, creativity, or conflict resolution and negotiation. Then look at the things you’re not so good at like maybe math or working with large groups. Know what you’re weak in is important because then you can avoid jobs that require those things and figure out how to mitigate those weaknesses elsewhere.
Then think about your past jobs and which ones you enjoyed and why you enjoyed them. What sort of work made you feel good? What made you feel energized and ready to get out of bed? Where did you thrive? And alternatively, where did you not thrive so you know to avoid them?
Finally you can merge these things and look at careers and job opportunities under that lens. Reflecting your skills, passions, and what you enjoy doing helps to guide you to jobs that you will actually enjoy.
Don’t be afraid to adjust your goals as you grow and learn in your life. Revisit and adjust them as you need to; nothing is set in stone!
Common Challenges
If creating career goals were easy, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. There are challenges that can come up, but they can be overcome and turned into a strength as they go. These include:
- Fear of Failure: It’s easy to agonize and make no choices out of fear of making the wrong one. Alternatively, some people have a fear of success; that by creating these goals and utilizing them, you’ll succeed, and you don’t know how to take that either! But Failure (or success) are both learning opportunities and remember that goals are never set in stone.
- Don’t know what’s out there: If you don’t know what’s out there, you won’t know how to make goals to reach it. So do some research in the things that interest you and focus from there.
- Work-Life Balance: life doesn’t stop while you’re figuring out your job and you probably have family, finances, personal goals, and other things going on. But just like figuring out your career goals, you can sort out your other priorities as well. And you can find jobs that match those priorities while practicing good time management skills.
Pursuing Your Career Goals
Once you have a better idea of your career goals, it’s important to go after them. This part can be intimidating, but also exciting and they can also help you hone your career dreams. It’s mostly a matter of meeting other people in your sought-after career and getting to know what they have to offer! This can mean doing things like attending industry events, taking part in relevant online communities, seeking mentorship, and making sure to continue learning your skills in your career. There are lots of opportunities to connect with people and training in most fields, so take advantage of them to further your ambitions.
Defining your career goals is important as it’s like having a road map for your life. Remember that you can always update as needed, don’t compare yourself to others, and keep learning!
