Career Goals

Career goals are objectives that you set for yourself on what you want to achieve in your career. It is also a way to evaluate your progress along your career paths toward your goals. Career goals can be short term or long term. Long-term goals are often more general since they may change over time; short-term should be specific because they can be planned accordingly. For example, a student may set a short term goal to be a software developer when graduate. A software developer may set a short term goal to be a software project manager in three years. The long term goals are usually five to ten years in the future. A software worker may set long term goals to be a software director, Chief Information Officer (CIO), or an owner of a software company and measure his achievement along his career paths to determine whether he is making progress or not.

Students should set career goals when entering college. They should set goal such as getting a job in the field of study that they choose. Their progress is the level of education that will allow them to qualify for the job. For example, students need to take a number of computer courses and other requirements to get degree in computer science and with that degree they can apply for a software job. Those who already working should set goal for their careers such as what position they can obtain, how much money they can get, or what kind of company that they want to work for. 

When setting career goals, it is important to consider the basic motivation and things to do to achieve it. Once a student has a list of things to do, he should set a time frame to achieve these goals. He will need to review these goals occasionally to make sure that the plans are realistic. Some people like to set goals in term of money. For example, if a person wanted to make $100,000 USD a year, he needs to think about whether his company can pay him that much, and if so, what position he needs to get before that salary could be offered. He must think about what kind of skills he must have to work in that position, and if there are any things he could do to get that position.

It is important to review your career goals occasionally to make sure that they are still relevant. As things change over time, goals need to be updated too. For example, if a person wanted to work in a foreign country, he might consider learning foreign language as a goal. If later on, he gets married and decide to stay home, then learning foreign language might not be as important.

Prof. Vu
Carnegie Mellon University
Original source: http://www.segvn.org/forum/mvnforum/viewthread_thread,1897