6 Career Goals Examples and How to Create Them | Coursera

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Use these career goal examples to reflect on what you'd like to accomplish in your career.
Short- and long-term career goals are accomplishments you achieve to advance your work and, ultimately, your career.
Establish career goals by making them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Your career goals may include advancing to a leadership position, finding a new career path, or becoming a thought leader.
You can also focus your career goals on developing a new professional skill that may strengthen your abilities for current and future roles.
Learn more about career goals, and explore six example goals. If you’re ready to develop your skills to advance your career, consider enrolling in the University of Michigan’s Leading People and Teams Specialization. In as little as four weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to create and communicate your vision as a leader, learn how to manage talent to improve employee performance, and use the Michigan Model of Leadership to define organizational goals.
A career goal is an accomplishment that you are progressing toward in your work. With clear professional goals, you can center all of your professional actions and decisions around your ultimate career aspirations.
Often, people will categorize their career goals as short-term or long-term. Generally, short-term goals can be accomplished more immediately, within a few months, and long-term goals will take more time, perhaps a year or longer. Acknowledging how much time your goals may take you to accomplish can enable you to set realistic expectations, prioritize tasks, and track your progress.
One popular method for goal-setting is to make them SMART:
Specific: Is your goal absolutely clear?
Measurable: Can you quantify your success?
Achievable: Is your goal realistic?
Relevant: Does your goal directly relate to your big-picture dream?
Time-bound: When will you achieve your goal?
Together, these five checkpoints can encourage goal completion, but they’re not the only key to success. Learn more tips for staying motivated as you work toward your goals.
In addition to writing SMART career goals, you can focus on writing stretch goals or feedback-driven goals. Develop stretch goals that may be a reach, pushing you outside of your comfort zone. You can write feedback-driven goals based on supervisory feedback provided through annual reviews, coaching, or 360 reviews. Whatever goals you choose, you can break them down into sub-goals to make them more achievable and keep track of your progress in writing.
Below, you’ll find some examples of potential career goals, some ideas on how you might structure your short-term and long-term goals, and how you might talk about each goal with a potential employer during a job interview.
When discussing your career goals during an interview, aim to:
Outline the steps you’re taking to achieve your goal.
Explain how your career goal connects to your potential future role.
Your specific path toward a leadership role greatly depends on your industry and where you’re starting out, and it can take many years to accomplish. Along the way, you may aim to accomplish some of these goals:
Short-term goals: Gain necessary experience with entry- and mid-level positions, attend leadership training, set up informational interviews with potential mentors and team leaders, and network with cross-functional colleagues.
Long-term goals: Get a promotion, earn a professional certificate or advanced degree, and work toward a specific title.
“What are your career goals?” sample answer: Currently, I’m working on a project to unify our internal analytics processes across data analysis, data science, and data engineering departments by liaising with representatives from each department to identify and address pain points. I’m also attending weekly leadership training sessions to build my managerial skills as I build the skills I need to ultimately become a Director of Analytics.
Thought leaders exist in many areas within every industry, and their knowledge base can be expansive or niche. Depending on the type of thought leader you envision yourself becoming, you may aim to accomplish some of these goals:
Short-term goals: Attend specialty training sessions, take relevant classes, attend industry conferences, and build a social media following.
Long-term goals: Earn a professional certificate or advanced degree, publish articles, write a book, and speak at a conference.
“What are your career goals?” sample answer: I’ve been taking online courses in social work from the University of Michigan to strengthen my knowledge base as I work with community organizers toward our team goals. I’m sharing our progress by writing for our company blog. In the next couple of years, I hope to apply for Michigan’s MSW program to make an even stronger impact on our company and community.
Expanding your skill set, or professional development, as it's often called, is about strengthening your abilities so you can be the best version of yourself for your role. When talking about any of the following, remember to connect them back to the work you’re doing for your organization:
Short-term goals: Fill skill gaps with classes or training sessions, take on a new project at work, network with leaders you admire, and find a mentor.
Long-term goals: Lead with your values, learn a new skill, practice work-life balance, and change careers.
“What are your career goals?” sample answer: I’d like to be seen as a valued connector within our organization, so I’ve been working on strengthening my communication skills to better determine how our lean IT team can respond to customer needs. Over the next few months, I’d like to lead more formal research into the matter and pilot a new request ticketing system.
Read more: How to Find a Mentor and Grow Toward Your Goals
Talking about a desire to change careers during a performance review can be tricky. You don’t need to