How To View And Manage Your Career In The Short, Medium, And Long-Term?
I have been motivated by the eternal desire to change the world in the years I have lived.
I and many others desire to do great and big things, the desire to leave a mark and maybe touch a few hearts.
I have also learned that this is the driving force of many other people. They, too, desire to imprint their names in history books and maybe have their names sung in folk songs and talked about in stories of career motivation long after they have passed.
Others are driven by the desire to be successful, make something of themselves, and take pride in the careers they have had.
This fiery desire makes them strive and invest maximum effort in growing their careers, taking up 9-5 jobs, starting a flourishing business, and looking back with pride and smile at all they have achieved after it is all done.
Isn’t that the dream?
However, none of this is possible without proper career management.
What is career management?
A term with many possible definitions, but in simple terms, career management means taking ultimate control and ownership of your career by identifying specific goals and then coming up with a development plan to meet the said goals.
It is important to note that irrespective of your line of work, every adult has full responsibility and is ultimately in charge of managing their career.
Setting goals in career management
When someone sets out to achieve something, it usually starts with an idea, which will remain unless morphed into a plan.
Now the thing is, many people stop at having an idea or goal in mind and fail to devise a plan mapped towards their goal.
For some, if they take the next step and manage to come up with a plan, they fail to implement their plan.
Sometimes it is inevitable due to lack of resources or motivation, and other times it’s because they set impossible goals.
In this article, we will look at goal setting in detail. The article further advises setting realistic career goals and the best ways of working towards them.
What is a career goal?
A career goal is a clear or well-defined statement explaining and detailing the profession one wishes and intends to pursue throughout their career.
Every job seeker or prospective employee needs to have a clear and well-defined career goal. This is meant to help them develop effective action plans to achieve their goals.
As you will soon learn, a good career goal should be realistic.
Setting unrealistic goals can be a recipe for disaster and lead to disappointments. This, however, doesn’t mean that you should set overly easy goals.
Instead, give yourself a challenge worth celebrating when achieved. The easiest way of keeping yourself motivated and focused on achieving your dreams and goals is to create resolutions.
Setting career goals is not a complex process. On the contrary, it is relatively easy, given it is more like the first step of a tedious journey. The trick lies in setting targets or breaking down the ultimate long-term goal.
For example, if a 21-year engineering student at college has plans to be the CEO of a large engineering firm, they must go through several stages before getting to their big goal.
These stages are their smaller and medium goals, such as graduating with a good GPA, working for a smaller engineering company, and enrolling in a management course to boost their managerial skills in preparation for their desired CEO role.
Short-term vs. Long-term Career Goals
From the example explained above, we can agree that this future CEO has the long-term goal of heading a big engineering firm.
To effectively achieve that, they need to break this down into short-term and medium-term targets, such as graduating with good grades getting a managerial position. They then have to conquer the shorter and medium goals to reach their destination.
Short-term goals vary from person to person, but generally, these are goals that you can achieve within one year; medium-term goals should be achieved within 1-5 years. Achieving long-term goals usually takes relatively longer, say 5 to 15 years.
How to set career goals?
Setting goals, whether long or medium, or short term, is, as stated earlier, simply the first step or the battle before the war.
Focus and determination are needed to accomplish the goals you have set. However, no amount of focus or resolution will fix a defective goal and plan. If one doesn’t map or develop their goals realistically and adequately, it will be close to impossible to achieve them.
Listed below in detail are some qualities or criteria that your goals should meet.
Realistic
This is one of the essential qualities of a good career goal. An unrealistic goal is a wrong goal. Imagine dreaming of winning a Grammy when you have never sung a song, played an instrument, or when your singing voice can awaken the dead so that they can stop you.
Realistic, however, doesn’t mean too simple. Whether long, medium, or short term, a good career goal should be challenging enough to deserve celebration when achieved. It should not be a walk in the park. If your dreams and plans don’t move you out of your comfort zone, you should probably set higher and more challenging limits.
Measurable
A good career goal should also be measurable. This means that you should be able to measure your goal’s outcome after a while. The most effective way of doing this is setting a defined time frame, such as enrolling for an extra management course and graduating in two years.
Once this is done, you, as the goal setter, are on the right path of achieving your ultimate or more significant goal.
Specific and personal
Your career goal should also be specific and personal to you. Your goal should clearly define what success is to you as a person. People are somewhat different, and this means that your long-term goal and ultimate success could be a simple milestone to achieving and doing bigger things for a different person. Therefore, your goals should be tethered to fit who you are as a person and not based on other people’s perspectives.
Positive
A good career goal should be positive and should not possess any aspects of negativity. This means that it should focus more on things you want to achieve than on things you don’t like or want to avoid. Your goals should define and map a journey towards something, not a trip away from something.
Possess a plan for each goal.
A goal without a plan is simply an idea that might not materialize. Therefore, for each purpose you set, devise and attach a strategy to it, or take specific measures and steps to achieve the said goal. It is advisable to list the different activities needed to achieve a particular purpose.
Short-term career goals.
Short-term goals are those goals that will have an immediate and direct impact or effect on your life career-wise. They usually have a time frame of under a year, maybe a couple of months. They, in most cases, consist of small changes and adjustments that push you to a much bigger goal. They could be as simple as getting up earlier or keeping a more organized work desk. However, they are actions that are mandatory to achieving your bigger goals. Irrespective of your career, you should complete these short-term goals within a stipulated period to grow professionally.
Short-term goals usually aim to address productivity and efficiency in preparation for the bigger purpose. Therefore, they need to be specific, measurable, and realistic. They are also subject to change the closer you get to your ultimate goals. Consequently, it would be best to be rigid when setting these up. However, it would be best if you were consistent to get each of them done.
Here are some examples of short term goals:
Improving time management
Becoming more productive at work.
Being more organized in your work routine.
Start learning a new skill
Socializing more to build a more robust network.
Enrolling for extra classes to better your qualifications
Taking a continuing education class to learn a new skill needed in the workplace.
Medium-term goals.
These are goals or milestones that are neither short nor long term. You could say they are a bit of both. Medium-term goals are only achieved after a series of short-term goals have been achieved consequently, and it is these that build together to form a long-term pursuit. Medium-term goals have a time frame of between one to five years.
Short-term goals are immediate and can be achieved sooner rather than later. Long-term goals are what we want, or you could call them the bull’s eye. The value of medium-term goals is to let you check and evaluate yourself. Using medium-term goals, you can know if you are still heading towards the long-term goal you set out to achieve in the first place or whether your choices have to or have been altered.
Saving money is close to a perfect example of a medium-term goal. For example, if you have a long-term goal of buying a house for $100,000, the short-term goal will be getting a job that pays you enough to be able to put $200 of your earnings aside weekly. This means that in two months, your house purchase account ought to have $1,600. Now, this is your medium-term goal. If you check your budget after two months and the money doesn’t amount to what you are supposed to have, you know that you are not walking towards your long-term and ultimate goal, and therefore your behavior has to change. That is the value of medium-term goals.
Examples of medium-term goals are listed below.
Finish a degree or master’s degree you are currently pursuing.
Change a career or company
Manage your sector in a company
Strengthen your CV with new projects
Start a side business
Better your performance metrics
Master a new skill
Build your brand as an expert
Long-term career goals.
These are milestones or goals one set for oneself to be achieved in the long term. Unlike short-term or medium-term goals, they take years to complete and not months or days. They, therefore, don’t have an immediate effect on someone’s routine. Instead, it all happens after a while.
Long-term goals are major game changers and are vital in keeping you focused on your desired career path. Listed below are some examples of long-term goals.
Use a newly mastered skill and merge it with your everyday life or earn money.
Get a job promotion
Gain experience in various aspects of your career.
Improve and build a better network and use it to your gain.
It is, however, essential to remember and understand that people are very different, and therefore their goals are bound to be different. In addition, they have different strengths and weaknesses, which creates a difference in their abilities. Thus, one person’s long-term goals can be another’s smaller and short-term goals.
Effective Ways To Achieve Your Career Goals In 2024.
Write them down
This is a significantly undermined technique and yet quite effective.
It is known that people who write down their goals stand a bigger chance of achieving them than people who don’t write. Another advantage of writing your goals down is that you constantly think about them and, in turn, devise ways of getting close to them.
Share the plan
Sharing the plan that maps the way to your goals with trusted friends and family helps you get unbiased views and perspectives. So many times, we are blind to the loopholes in our plans or goals. However, sharing with a third party and listening to their view can help address this problem.
Also, sharing with friends can be a source of motivation in times of doubt.
In the same way, a third party can see a loophole in your plan, and they can also help you downsize a hindrance or problem in a plan because they look at it from a whole new perspective.
Finally, sharing plans also challenges people to see their dreams through to the end since they have talked about them.
VISUALISE success
High achievers always have a standard quality, and that is visualising success. They will ignore the mayhem and chaos around them and solely focus on what they want to achieve. They often picture themselves sitting in their fierce desire positions or see themselves fulfilled and successful. Coaches tell athletes to envision themselves passing the finish line in glory and amidst cheer before the race starts. It is the same with career goals; you need to think about the journey to what you want or where you want to be while picturing yourself as a victor already.
Listed below are some of the effective ways of making progress towards fully addressing and managing your career.
Develop long-term career aspirations plans
While humanity has no control over the future and what may be, having a career development plan in place is always paramount and advised.
It is further recommended not to develop goals and objectives that are not achievable and executable.
Setting impossible goals puts you at risk of frustration caused by fruitless efforts.
Explore your strengths, abilities, needs, and interests and base your plan on these fundamentals. Set personal goals, that when achieved, will give you emotional satisfaction.
Divide your long term career plan into medium-term plans or short term action items
With an achievable long-term plan or goal in mind, divide or break it up into smaller goals that are achievable over a shorter period.
In making and working towards these lighter goals, identify the potential for personal developmental opportunities like learning an extra skill.
Based on your natural skills and abilities, set up these short-term goals and use the skills you are endowed with to work towards them and, in turn, simultaneously work towards the medium-term goals that ultimately help you achieve your long-term career goal.
Remember to celebrate yourself whenever you reach a milestone because you are working towards a more significant cause.
However, remember that the top of one mountain is the foot of another, so keep climbing.
Open yourself to the possibility of failure, learning, and opportunity, regardless of the discomfort.
Many people are scared of trying new things because they are afraid of failure.
Perfectionists rebuke thoughts and chances of trying something for the first time because they are so frightened of being imperfect or flawed at it.
They would rather play it safe than risk the possibility of being bad at something.
Nelson Mandela said he doesn’t fail; he either wins or learns. Failure is inevitable sometimes; what makes you different is what you do after failing.
Proper career management is an impossibility without taking risks and failing sometimes.
It, however, also means learning from our failures and wearing our scars. It means falling seven times and getting up eight times. It means open-mindedness and the desire to move forward irrespective of how small the steps are.
Make use of the people around you.
Career planning and management are a shared responsibility.
For it to be effective, it takes commitment, but it will collapse without the support of peers or people around you.
The people around you are like your mirror. They sometimes see things about or in you that you could be blind to. Ask them to tell you about your strengths and weaknesses. Yes! We all have flaws and imperfections, but there’s always room and time for improvement.
Also, remember to build your network genuinely and honestly. Networking is not a one-way street, and neither is it transactional. Open yourself up to the possibility of people getting to know you as you also get to know them. Ensure to volunteer for assignments to build skills and connections.
Go out there and build your network.
In conclusion, it is wise to remember that managing one’s career is a continuous venture. It is not for only people in top or managerial positions or politicians, and it doesn’t entail waiting on another to do it for you. It is as personal as underwear. It is solely up to you to take the front seat in your career or professional aspirations while using resources at your disposal and your management to accomplish your goals.
Your vision and desire for success are also personal, and it’s only you who can determine what success is to you. You are in charge.