The short-term career goal is one of the best beneficial strategies that stand as a stepping stone between where an individual currently stands and where they hope to end up in the future. In essence, without these goals, your dream is likely going to be a mere one. In this piece, we will look at the role short-term career goals play in the life of every individual, what your own goals should be like, the career goals statement examples, and a good example of how to set short-term career goals. Let’s drive!
Short Term Career Goals
Short-term career goals are professional goals placed by an individual or a person to enable them to achieve their career aspirations in life. These are goals that focus on the future and are basically achievable within days or weeks.
n addition, the goal of improving the metrics of your work, such as the effectiveness, efficiency, quality, and quantity of your work, is one of the most straightforward professional short-term goals, as it helps you stand out and become better at whatever you do.
Importance of short-term goals
- It keeps you well-focused and determined to achieve your dreams
- It keeps you grounded when it comes to achieving the tasks at hand, instead of losing yourself to stress.
- It maintains motivation by keeping you stronger as you remove each goal from your list and move closer to your long-term goals.
- It creates the idea in people’s heads that you are committed to what you do and you can do anything to see yourself achieve all that needs to be achieved.
- Helps you to also reassess your expectation.
What Are Some Short-Term Career Goals?
- Gain a new degree for yourself.
- Develop your work-life balance.
- Develop your interpersonal, communication, and networking skills.
- Don’t waste all the time you have during work hours. In other words, maximize your time.
- Create your own website.
- Make an effort to read at least one or two job-related books every month. In essence, spend more of your time reading than talking.
- Learn and develop yourself in making good use of new technology.
- Start your own personal project.
- Improve and develop your work performance.
What Are Your Top 3 Career Goals?
There are questions you might have encountered during an interview. Questions like, what are your long and short-term goals? Whether you are applying for a job or you are exploring how to make a move in your place of work, there is a great need and value in working towards your long and short-term goals. There are so many short-term goals one can set for themselves, but here are just three of them:
- Identify your skills and the various experiences you have.
- Analyze where you want to be in the future and the experiences you will need to get there.
- Also, develop a roadmap that will enable you to reach those objectives in a well-calculated and timely manner.
What Are Your Short-Term Career Goals
Most people find it very difficult to answer this question sometimes. Although not necessarily linked to work goals. Setting your career goals is also going to improve your long-term goals too. There are so many short-term career goals, but carefully analyze the ones that best suit your journey.
How you can Choose Your Career Goals
Typically, there is no professional way how you can set your career goals. However, there is literally one rule you must follow recommended by great experts; REAL is an acronym for:
- Relevant: This stands for why your goals are very crucial and worthwhile.
- Experimental: This indicates the development activities that will literally lead to great insights.
- Aspiration: indicates a good area of desired development and enlargement of great objectives.
- Learning-based: This identifies the outcomes that are focused on earning abilities and capacity.
What Are the 5 Smart Goals?
SMART is the acronym for; specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals
Here are five smart goals every individual must possess. There are:
- Specific: Being specific about your goals shows that they are clearly stated and comprehensible to anyone reading them. Also, it states what to do and who will do it. In addition to this, it produces a well-detailed accountable goal.
- Measurable: Your goals must state how the action must be properly measured. Generally, measuring your goals helps you to determine if you are really going forward and progressing with your plans.
- Achievable: This part of the goals helps you to set the project up for success.
- Relevant: Relevant goals help you in addressing the vision of your project and enable you to achieve them.
- Time-bound: Every goal has an appropriate time for completion. This makes it a successful objective.
Short-Term Career Goals Example
These examples offer a great starting point that you can use to develop your own goals. However, some of these goals are achieved in a few hours and sometimes take days. Here are some of their examples:
~1. Change into a new career path
This is a good example of short-term career goals, very important to help you get essential skills that you may need to find the potential positions with job descriptions that best fit your skills.
~2. Develop yourself the more
You must ensure to pay good attention to your personal development because it is very crucial to your professional development. In essence, work towards your interpersonal skills, communication skills, job interview skills, and the rest of them. Additionally, while developing your career goals, also do well to develop your personal skills and goals too. The only time you can function well professionally is when you develop yourself well. So, develop yourself.
~3. Learn a new skill
This is also the best example of achieving your short-term career goals. However, learning a new skill might feel unnecessary sometimes to add, but it is very crucial and worthwhile. Learning skill adds to your existing knowledge and basically help you develop your problem-solving skills.
~4. Develop your skills and become a great expert in your own field
Becoming a great expert is another example of both long and short-term career goals. These goals will enable you to pursue learning opportunities. Thus, this short-term goal is very essential in achieving both your personal and professional goals.
~5. Develop and increase your performance metrics
This short-term goal is a key performance indicator. In essence, it is a very valuable tool that can be used to measure and analyze your career objectives. Overall, this helps you to achieve your REAL goals because you have something you are aiming at.
~6. Learn and increase your knowledge in making use of a new technology
The advancement in technology increases a good number of innovative tools that most industries rely on. Also, it delivers productivity and high efficiency at work. In essence, your ability or capacity to gain mastery of these tools will place you in a good position than others and also create a great impact on the productivity of your work.
Types of Short-term Goals
There are so many types of short-term goals that can improve your professional, personal, and career prospects. They can be:
- Academics short-term goals
- Health short-term goals
- Career short-term goals
- Financial short-term goals
What Are Short-Term Goals Examples for Students?
These goals enable students to structure the steps they must take in order to achieve and attain their desired careers. These goals are:
- Organize a good workspace at home where you can carry your duties out.
- Find and stop every worst habit you feel is draining you from achieving your goals.
- Develop and improve your strength rather than your weakness.
- Talk to your teachers or maybe a counselor about your prospects.
- Create a professional and good career profile of yourself.
- Become a good communicator.
- Ensure you earn an advanced certificate.
Career Goals Statement Examples
Before we jump into the following examples of career goals statements, you need to know what a career statement is. So, Career goals statements are aspiration statements properly tailored to your professional objectives. Aspiration statements are statements that identify what you are aiming to achieve in the future.
Thus, they are statements that enable you to highlight your dreams and provide you with the ideal outcome for your plans. It is also a short paragraph that states what you want to accomplish in the nearest future. If you are yet to write down your professional or personal goals, a good career goal statement is a crucial and beneficial exercise to tackle before you jump into your career statement. Here are some examples of the career goals statement:
~1. I’ll be my own boss in the next two years
I’ll be my own boss is one of the examples of the career goals statement. This statement actually enables individuals to achieve some of their goals because it creates a time bound for their goals to be finally met.
~2. I’ll be promoted to sales manager in less than five years
This is one of the examples of a career goals statement many people make in an organization. These dreams of becoming better in the future give the individual all the motivation they need to actualize and meet their predetermined goals.
~3. I’ll be a full-time writer and also expand my network before the year ends
This is also one of the examples of a career goals statement. Developing this statement in your head and then writing them down in a manner that is clearly understandable enables you to meet your objective even before the stated time.
How to Set Short-Term Career Goals
Basically, goal setting will reveal things you probably didn’t know about yourself. It will teach you new skills, experiences and also help you develop your ability to work towards your objective plans. In other to set your short-term career goals well, here are what you must do and how to set them:
~1. Make an appropriate plan
Making a plan is one of the most important ways you can use to set short-term career goals. This allows you to create and develop a good action plan for every objective task to be carried out. Making a plan keeps you motivated and knowing exactly what to accomplish first at the right time.
~2. Divide all your larger objectives into minor or small tasks
This is one of the best ways to set comprehensible short-term career goals. Divide your larger career goals into smaller tasks. This will enable you to work towards your goals, knowing what task to accomplish first and at the specified time.
~3. Carefully organize your goals
Organizing your goals is a great way to set good short-term career goals. Identify which of your goals is most essential to you and time-sensitive.
~4. Properly consider what you want to achieve
This is a very good way you can set short-term goals appropriately. Generally, this will help you to create a list of objectives you want to achieve in the time to come. Carefully determine which objective deserves most of your time, it will help you narrow down your list and what objectives need to be achieved first.
Summary
In summary, the objective of improving the metrics of your work, such as the effectiveness, efficiency, quality, and quantity of your work, is one of the most straightforward professional short-term goals, as it helps you get better at what you do. Apart from separating a complex goal from smaller ones and making it more achievable, short-term goals also help you stay motivated on your way to long-term success. In essence, setting your career goals is also going to improve your long-term goals too.
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