In this article you are going to learn about:
- An overview of what are the career goals?
- Why should individuals need to focus on setting career goals?
- Tips to consider while setting new career goals
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Selecting a career is one of the most difficult and important decisions that every pre-college student and the working person has to make at some point in their life. Every ambitious person asks themselves where they want to be in the coming years? Or in the five years? What type of technical and soft skills they need to land themselves in a particular industry.
If you are just starting out then these questions might be popping up in your mind every time you think about your future goals. But with the right assessment and career advisor every school and college student can set an ambitious goal by evaluating multiple.
Not only students but many working professionals don’t have a structured career goal and choose to get rotten in their current job just because of the risk involved in the career switch.
One of the common questions by every working professional is “What if I switch my career and the selected industry doesn’t fulfill my priorities”.
Well with the right career goal and plan you can grow in any industry. But what if you have a platform that enables you to explore every ins & outs, pros and cons of the different industries including its growth, pay, working conditions, skills, and more.
Many people are not sure how to set a career goal for their future. Most of them either listen to their friend’s suggestions or take the decision depending on the family recommendation. But what if a career assessment platform enables you to set a career goal depending on practical and fact-based knowledge.
Today the majority of the college pass out or field workers are unsatisfied with their employment. Different surveys state that two-third of the working people are unhappy with their careers and jobs. Many of them fail to select the right career just because of less knowledge about different industries.
So let’s dive in and identify how you can set smart and Ambitious career goals.
What are the career goals?
Before we dive down to how you can set an ambitious goal for your career. First, let’s understand what is goal setting?
A career goal is basically a statement that explains what profession you wish to pursue in your whole career. Goals and objectives or expectations are two different things in career planning.
By setting a goal, people create an aim for the long-term future whereas having an objective helps you to achieve your goal. For example, if you want to learn a new coding language. Then your goal is to be able to write any type of code and everything you do to accomplish your goal like learning a small topic of programming by adding a daily task are the objectives.
Similarly, your expectation is not your goals. If you are capable of becoming a successful programmer someday then that is an expectation. On the other hand, if you see yourself working code for software then that is your vision.
Why should people have career goals?
Before moving ahead with the step by step process to set an ambitious goal for your future. First, let me clarify Why you need to have a career goal?
Having a vision helps you to decide your next step. Every human gets confused about what next they have to do in their career. Some of them end up selecting the best one for their career and many people start following the steps taken by others. A clear and ambitious career goal offers clarity, discipline, skill-building, and more.
Today in general there are two types of people
- The first ones are those who have already switched multiple careers or don’t believe in career planning just because they have seen lots of failures after joining different industries.
- The second ones are those who are totally unaware of what they want to be in their career. They are just going with the flow without any goal. It’s not that they don’t want to have one but unfortunately, they don’t know how to set one.
If you feel that you are one among them then reading this article will help you to identify how you can set and ambitious goals for your career. Many people today prefer to have a career advisor who can consult with them for 1 or more hours to build a better career path.
But what if you have a career assessment platform that allows you to explore different industries. Vati bridges the gap by offering an advanced career assessment platform that can help you to set the right career goal depending on your interest and skills.
Below we are listing some point to help you find why your need to set career goals:
1. Offers clarity
A well-planned career goal offers clarity and vision towards the next step. If you are totally unaware of what you want to achieve in the coming future then you will probably end up selecting an undesired carrier, which you are not prepared or wish to join.
Many studies show that people with clear goals are likely to succeed within a short period of time (compared to those who are just following the trends). So by setting the right career goal you are making it clear to yourself that you want your career ahead in the specifics industry. For the next one or five years?
When you clearly identify your desired goal, you begin to find all the possibilities to achieve it. And that’s when you start taking steps to build an effective plan. These types of plans generally include adding time duration to complete a particular degree, certification, and more.
2. Creating plans
Having a career goal allows you to build a schedule to achieve your desired goals. For example, if you are in the middle of your second-year, public account, and looking to place yourself in and as CFO of a Fortune 500 company then you need to apply for that by the end of the year.
If you are planning to become CFO then you probably know how accounting works but to place yourself as CFO you need to have in-depth knowledge of accounting and others. In short, you have a long road ahead before you place yourself as the CFP of top MNC’s.
It can be only achieved with the right and structured plan. You need to acquire more knowledge and it can be accomplished only when you assign a time limit to complete the task. Get involved in other accounting activities to build additional skills and more.
Our platform enables you to access a wide range of data using which you can easily identify how leading companies’ CFO landed on that particular platform. Not only that but in our monthly seminar, you can speak to one of the working professionals who can give you an in-depth idea about how you can land into that particular profession.
3. Discipline towards schedule
Once you successfully complete setting up your career goal next you will have a vision towards achieving your goal. Today many people around say that they don’t want this job or need to change the job. But when it comes to changing it most of them either fail or take zero action towards it.
The worst part is that people give hundreds of reasons why they want a change but not a single reason for what they want to do and how they are going to do it. In short, they are not committed to their goal.
Having the right career goal will allow you to create a result-driven monthly and daily plan to move faster and work harder toward accomplishing your plan. You will be able to act in a more disciplined way with an eagerness to make each day better by completing your task and learning new things.
If you are still finding it difficult to create the right schedule for your career goal, then you take the help of our carer assessment platform which is not only limited to recommending the best career but also helps you to build a path to help you land in that particular field.
4. Attitude Toward Your Work
Having a plan allows you to work with a significant attitude toward achieving your goals. Before you had any goal you used to feel lethargic about researching on any topic or read books, complete certification, and more. Even at your office, everyone seemed to look annoying and you used to find the reason for not doing the work.
But after setting a career goal your way of living and working totally changes. You feel more excited about the work you do and find time to do an extra activity that can help you to grow in the field. Instead of getting annoyed, you feel happier at work and find opportunities to get yourself involved in some other work.
5. Inspires to Work toward the ultimate goal
Today many youngsters and working professionals don’t find a reason to get out of their bed and slowly things become hard for them to complete their daily tasks. Having an ultimate career goal offers you a reason which encourages people to fulfill their plan no matter what the cost.
It inspires people to wake up early, utilize every minute, look for various opportunities, and most importantly uplift during hard times. With a commitment to your goal, you can set a mindset to achieve your goal by dedicating time to build the right skills. One can get committed only when you are convinced that the goal is important and perhaps the most important aspects of your life.
6. Learn various Skills
Undoubtedly to land in the right career you need to have technical as well as soft skills. In short, to achieve the ultimate goal you need to learn lots of things that spring on the career path you are choosing. With learning comes the habit of reading books, listening to various audios, watching educational videos, and more.
Once you get habituated then automatically your learning and absorbing skills will increase and you will be able to see yourself as a much smarter and dedicated person toward your goal. No matter which industry you are trying to get into, your first priority should always be to acquire more knowledge and build additional skills.
Taking additional courses, volunteering as a part-time worker in the same industry, and taking internship allows you to get exposure to what skills and knowledge you need to achieve your goal
7. Change in lifestyle
Every small change you adopt during your career building process will help you to structure your lifestyle. You would prefer to spend more time learning new skills than watching tv after completing your work.
Instead of spending time with just any friend, you will start hanging out with people who can encourage you about your goal and offer you essential tips to succeed in your path. You will start finding yourself in a position where everything seems to look easy and possible. In short, you will become an unstoppable person.
Tips to consider while setting new career goals
By now you might have a clear idea about why you recommend you set a career goal. Next, we will help you to identify how you can set an ambitious goal to improve your career. There are various ways to set a goal but below we are going to highlight the step by step process that you can consider to find the best career goal.
1. Start taking Self-Assessment
A recommendation from friends and family never gives you a guarantee that you will land in a profitable, sustainable, and enjoyable profession. However, starting with self-assessment will allow you to identify your interest, skills, personality trait, and more.
Keeping a stock of your priorities will allow you to explore different industries to set a career goal based on fact-based knowledge. Self-assessment helps people to discover what they are best at and they can set a career goal depending on their priorities.
Consult with an expert: Consulting with a career advisor or counselor is one of the oldest trends. But are consulting with the right career advisor? Vati has come up with an AI-driven career assessment platform that allows people to take the self-assessment test by themselves and offers them multiple career options depending on their skills. Whether you are a 12-grade pass out or working in a multinational company our career assessment platform will help you to identify your hidden skills.
Building Career Profile: Once you are aware of your expertise next you need a profile that you can use to set your career goal. Reviewing your skills, interest, academic activity and work history will enable you to identify which direction you need to go ahead. You will get access to what type of work, internship, and job excites you. In your career profile, you can have a list of activities that created an impact. If you feel confused about how you can create your career profile? Then take the help of our career assessment platform that helps people to have a strong career profile depending on the data we receive from self-assessment and other processes.
Identify your skills: Skills are one of the most important aspects that will help you to identify which field you are eligible for. Yes, people can build technical or hard skills with their efforts but when it comes to soft skills it is built over the year, and building soft skills take time like personality traits, communication skills, and more. You can ask yourself
- What skills are you good at?
- How much time will it take to get expertise in a particular skill?
- Where are the common skills that every industry asks for?
- What type of skills do you need to enter into your desired industry?
You can make a list of skills that you liked and wanted to get involved in. Or you can take the help of our career assessment platform that helps you to find what type of skills you are good at and the type of industry you can get into.
2. Conducting research on the different career option
Once you are done with the self-assessment, the next step is conducting research on various career options so that you have a list of multiple careers that meet your priorities. Having multiple options makes your filtration process more effective as you can select the best one depending on your skills, understand priorities.
You can start by scanning various industries and career guides that offer in-depth knowledge of a wide range of occupations. Once you have a list of occupations you can look into what workers do while working there, skills need to enter into the industry, working conditions required certification or education, and more. Depending on the research you can come up with a list of options that matched a few of your priorities.
Not only that but take our career quizzes to help you identify the best career option that matches your interest, priorities, and qualification. If you have already taken us on our career assessment platform to set your career then you might have figured out what is the best option for your future.
To research more about different occupations, you can visit different job titles to identify the list of career possibilities. Once you have a list of top-performing sectors that match your skills and interest then you can look into different job opportunities and check their requirement so that you have built one.
For example, if the health sector interests you then you can ding into different categories in the health sector by typing keywords like “career in health care”. Make sure you have a list of a minimum of 10 or more career options so that you can brainstorm different occupations.
3. Dig into your top selected career options
Once you have successfully selected multiple career options next you can perform research on different categories under each section to get detailed ideas about the sustainability of the field. Individually reading about each section will help you to identify some hidden truth that most people are not aware of.
If you think, why research an individual field is important? Then here is the thing, landing in any field is easy and with little knowledge about the industry can help you get a job. But what if the selected field doesn’t meet your priorities, doesn’t offer you the desired paycheck, satisfaction, and more. Well yes, you can switch careers but why not have prior knowledge about the field.
Performing In-depth research allows you to identify working conditions, education or certification requirements, and most importantly what other employees do. You can use keywords in google like “career in the health industry”, “career information cybersecurity” and many more. There are many professionals and working employees that offer excellent resources related to the industry functioning.
If possible you can get in touch with them or review their profile to see how they landed in that particular position. Vati brings professionals and working employees from different industries on one platform to talk about their daily routine, what they do at the office, and many more. Because getting an in-depth review from a person working in that particular industry allows you to make more wise decisions.
You can identify the requirement to enter into that particular field. Training, certification, and educational degree required to make yourself eligible for the job. Things you learn during your research process will play a major in deciding your career goal. Match it against your skills, interests, and priorities to set the best career goal for your future.
4. Speak to a working professional
If your research process is successful but you still have doubts regarding the particular industry then you can speak to a professional or an employee working in that particular industry. Informational interviews allow you to get a clear idea and insight about things happening inside the industry and whether that industry meets your priorities or not.
You can also reach out to your college alumni, contact your personal contact or social network to help you find the right details about the industry. If possible you can ask for an in-person or telephonic conversation to make your research process more effective and impactful.
Vati offers a career assessment platform that brings various industry experts and working professionals together on one platform. Through their expertise and suggestion, you can easily identify what will happen if you land in that particular industry? Get In-Depth knowledge about their working culture, identify ins and outs of the industry, and many more.
The main reason behind launching Vati is to help high school students, college students and working professionals explore different industries and learn every small detail so that they can make more wise and research-based decisions.
5. Timeframe required to achieve your goal
After discovering your career goals and talking to working professionals you might have a clear goal to improve your career. If your previous list had 10 different career options then after going through lots of research processes and talking to an expert you may have a more filtered career option list.
Identifying and setting goals that you can accomplish within a short period of time (within 1 year) helps you to stay motivated and focused. It also encourages you to learn new skills. For example, if you are a developer and you want yourself to land into a .Net field. Instead of setting a long term goal, start with setting small or short term goals which can be achieved in months.
Once you are done with that then you can take the next step by setting another short term goal that takes you toward achieving your large goal. Before getting into any industry you need to understand the full scope of the goal, whether it is compatible with your timing and possible to accomplish it in a certain time frame or not.
There are many people out there who start with a good career plan but just because they had a long-term goal (3 or 5 years) many of them fail to accomplish it). If you are a college student then setting a long-term goal can be a good choice. On the other hand, if you’re working professionally then you should always have a short-term goal. Or goals that can be accomplished within a reasonable time frame.
6. Select a goal relevant to your interests and skills
Today career options are not limited to medical and engineering, there is a huge scope to grow in other fields as well (along with a good paycheck). But remember your goal should not be shifting totally to a new sector just because the paycheck is high.
For example, if you are working as a developer then can’t think of setting your career goal as becoming a cardiologist. On the other hand, if you are a college student pursuing your Mechanical engineering then can’t set your career goals as becoming an ENT specialist. It’s not that becoming a cardiologist or an ENT specialist is not a good option (as both are high paying jobs).
But to shift to a new career you need to reshuffle everything. So what’s the solution? Try to select a goal that aligns with your current profile. A mechanical engineer can think of becoming a cybersecurity expert and a Java developer can think of becoming a .Net or AWS certified engineer.
Each goal you include in your list should be relevant and meaningful in a way that doesn’t drive you away from your current professions. To identify whether the goal you are going to set is right for you or not. You can ask yourself what skills you need to enter into the industry? How much time will it take to get into that industry? Does select the particular career option will contribute toward your larger or long term goal?
Conclusion:
By now you might have a clear idea about why individuals should choose the right career goal for their future. Above we have listed all the important tips that you can consider while setting a new career goal for your future. If you need assistance in finding the right career for your future then you can always take the help of our highly advanced AI-driven career assessment platform or consult with our professionals.
Frequently Asked Questions About Career
Above we have listed all the steps that can help you to set an ambitious career goal. But there are a few questions that are frequently asked by every high school student, a college student.
1. What if I don’t know what I want to be in my career?
If you are unaware of where you want to be in your career then it’s recommended to be honest about it. Because there are many people out there who are uncertain about their career. They want a career shift but don’t know where to go.
The simple answer to this question is, most people know things that are in the market or popular among people. But when we start creating a tree for a particular sector there are lots of branches. For example, a computer science guy wants to be a software engineer or tester. But there are other opportunities like data scientist, Network architect, system analyst, web developer, product manager, business analyst, and many more.
Finding the right match totally depends on how you judge your skills and interest. Still, if you are unsure about your career then you can take the help of our career assessment platform that enables you to explore various career options. Using our platform you can get in-depth ideas about the functioning of different sections and the occupation under each sector. We guarantee after going through our AI-based career assessment platform you will not be able to say “I don’t know what I want to be”.
2. If it is good to start working toward my career goal or should I play it safe?
Undoubtedly your career goal should be your first priority but seeing SMART goals are always reasonable and fruitful. Most of the time people start working toward their goal and end up landing in financial problems. Well if you are a student then you should be dedicated and work hard towards your goal.
On the other hand, if you are a working professional whose financial income is totally dependent on a job then we recommend you to play it safe. You can work hard to gain skills during your leisure time. Once you feel that you can take a break from the job without any financial problem then you can focus on achieving your goal by gaining certification and skills.
Our platform offers detailed information about what you need to enter into the specific industry including skills, educational degrees, and many more. Not only that but we also help you to learn how much time will it take to complete all the necessary certifications and courses, which will enable you to enter the industry. Using our platform you can plan your long-term as well as a short-term career goal.
3. Should I discuss my career goal with my colleagues, friends, or family?
Discussing your career goals with friends and family is always beneficial but sometimes a wrong suggestion can lead to bigger problems. But most people express their suggestions based on what they have seen and learned to form their friends. But very few people offer research-based suggestions.
A research-based suggestion helps you to understand the ins and outs of the industry. Even if you think the decided career goal is meeting your priorities, skills, and interests. A wrong suggestion can drive you away from your goal. So make sure you are sharing it with the right person.
Or you can take the help of our career assessment platform that allows you to explore different career options and offer research-based data that can help you to decide whether the career option is right for your future or not.
4. Can I have several career goals?
Well, it’s always recommended to go with a dedicated and clearly defined career goal. Having a single goal enables you to focus on one career and achieve it within a period of time. Going ahead with the multiple career goals can distract you and most importantly you may end up getting distracted from the main goal.
However, in the planning phase, you can have a list of multiple careers so that you can select one depending on your skills, interest, and priorities. If you are planning for a long term goal then you can divide it into multiple short term goals which will help you to achieve your main career goal.
Using our career assessment platform you take up self-assessment to identify what’s best for your future. Depending on your performance our platform will also suggest multiple career options which can explore individually and select the best options that meet your priorities.
