What are Your Career Goals and Aspirations? Essay Sample

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What are Your Career Goals and Aspirations? Essay Sample

Everyone on this Earth has their career goal and their aspirations. Some aspire to become successful business people, others also to become doctors, and others engineers. However, to attain these career goals, one has to face life with its challenges and learn from them. A career goal to start with is a well-defined statement explaining the profession that an individual intends to pursue throughout his or her career (Mcdonald, et al, 2011).

It is important for every employee or job seeker to define their career goals clearly as this helps them to come up with effective action plans. A job seeker or an employee who does not have a career goal will always work to attain his employer’s goal. The main aim of this essay, however, is to discuss career goals and aspirations. The essay will begin by defining what a career goal is, it will later stress the importance of a career goal and lastly, it will discuss what aspirations are and a conclusion shall vindicate the discussion.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines aspiration as a strong desire to achieve something high or great. While cooperating finance institute has defined a career goal as a well-defined statement explaining the profession that an individual intends to pursue throughout his career. It is important for every employee or job seeker to define their career goals clearly. This helps them to come up with effective action plans.

Indeed.com states that "setting specific, measurable goals can provide a path to improve your career and achieve certain accomplishments. You can use goal setting when given a certain task or project, or to personally advance in some way. You can set goals towards promotions, creativity, education, and many other various ways to improve your life and career.” Setting goals or targets is indeed vital as it helps you stay on course, as it makes you not divert from what you need to do as opposed to what you want to do at a particular time. People who do not set goals do not do well in life as their lives are always disorganized. There are two types of goals; long and short-term goals.

Short-term goals to start with, are more immediate goals that one can set for themselves to achieve their larger and long-term goals. These are mostly considered milestones to achieving long-term goals. For example, when the United Nation set Vision 2030 which was the long-term goal, many countries set their own small goals so as to be able to realize vision 2030. Short-term goals usually exist in a short time frame, anywhere from days or months to one or two years. Other examples of short-term goals may include completing small tasks or projects, gaining experience, or taking classes. On this verge, one uses what they accomplished in the short term to complete their long-term goals.

Long-term goals on the other hand are usually large goals that one wants to achieve over a long period of time. To achieve this, one needs several short-term goals. Long-term goals might include getting a job in a certain career that one has been always dreaming of, being promoted to a certain level, or completing a lengthy, complicated project.

Once you know what you want out of your career and what you need to do to get it, you won’t waste time on some unnecessary tasks in your personal and working hours. This will help you focus your time and energy on things that will draw you closer to your vision. Further, this will create in you some form of appreciating heart for the value of your precious time.  Furthermore, if you are for instance a worker in Zambia who are unhappy with their level of work-life balance, setting goals will help you identify the steps you need to take to obtain that balance and gain greater control of your time.

When you have a career goal, you will definitely find it easier to communicate your desire and direction with friends and family. Moreover, this could mean that there would less friction at the dinner table and more opportunity to find out how your loved ones can help you reach your goals. For example, if one has set a goal of getting a job at a particular company that he or she loves, he or she will be able to find out on the internet and ask around to find if anyone in his or her network has a connection there. Or if one’s aim is to start studying with a course that will empower them to make an elusive career change, then he or she should feel motivated to tell others who may have advice on education institutions or contacts for work experience opportunities.

It is vital for someone also to have aspirations in life. Just as career goals are important so are aspirations. These two as earlier stated, help someone realize his or her potential.  Young people are mostly the ones who fall prey to these two as they still have to choose what to do in life (Jeffrey and McDowell, 2004: 131). Some end up on the wrong side of the road if their aspiration and their goals are not met.

In the nutshell, it is important for each and everyone to understand that in life things happen, negative and positive. Therefore, if one only desire positive thing to happen, then they might end up being frustrated and fail to attain their set goals. 

 

 References

Jeffrey C and McDowell L (2004) ‘Youth in a comparative perspective’, Youth and Society 36(2):131–142.

Mcdonald, Paula, Pini, Barbara, Bailey, Janis and Price, Robin, Young people's aspirations for education, work, family and leisure, Work, Employment & Society. VL - 25, 68, 2011.