What Are Your Career Goals Example Answers
And now, here are four example answers to this question, each representing a different point in a persons career:
Entry-Level No College
EXAMPLE ANSWER:
Right now, Im taking my first steps into the workforce. One thing that really drives me is the ability to help others, which is why I was drawn to this role. Customer service gives me a chance to make a difference in someones daily life. Plus, your company offers training to enthusiastic candidates, which I feel I am. As a result, I think this job could be the basis of an exciting career, opening up new doors that could help me grow and advance.
Entry-Level Recent Graduate
EXAMPLE ANSWER:
As a recent graduate, my main goal is to get real-world experience in the field. The ability to keep learning and growing is a priority, which is why I found this job opening so enticing. Along with being able to put my existing technical skills to work, Ill be a part of a collaborative team at a company that values professional development. In time, I think the culture would make moving up in the company a real possibility, allowing me to move into a higher position and, potentially, gain leadership skills that would put me on a management track down the line.
Mid-Level Individual Contributor
EXAMPLE ANSWER:
Management-Level Professional
EXAMPLE ANSWER:
Win A Prestigious Award In Your Industry
There are highly reputable awards handed out in nearly every industry you can think of. With well-known honors like The Nobel Prize, The Academy Awards, and The Pulitzer Prize to more industry-specific options like the Stevie Awards, Thrillist Awards, or SCORE Awards are there any merits youd like to receive?
Whether your employer offers special distinctions or youre striving to accomplish something for a third-party company, career goals dont get much more motivating than to be recognized with a prestigious award for your efforts.
What Skills Or Training Might Make You Better At This Job
A hiring manager may ask you this question to learn about any specific skills or training programs that you may desire to learn. It can be helpful to approach answering this question in a brief and honest manner in order to allow the hiring manager to find opportunities to assist you in learning new skills or giving you access to a training program that would best benefit you.
Example answer:”I believe that learning more technology skills would help me become more efficient in my role. Since technology evolves every day, I feel like I’m possibly falling behind in learning how to use new devices and software, and I think attending training sessions or workshops on using these new materials would help me do my job better.”
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Choose A Smart Career Goal To Discuss
Talking about a random goal in an interview can hurt your chances of impressing the interviewer.
This is why you need to pick a SMART career goal out of the list made earlier.
Now you may think, what is a SMART career goal?
Simply put, these are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Relevant, and Timeline specific.
Using the SMART approach while talking about your career goals reflects that you have a well-defined plan and that you mean to achieve it in all seriousness.
Let us understand these factors in detail.
Specific: Vague career goals may not help while answering, What are your career goals?. You will need a specific, to-the-point answer.
So instead of saying things like, I want to be better at my job, or My career goal is to outgrow myself!, go for something specific like, My career goal is to be a senior manager or I want to earn Rs. XXXXX while working in a QPR position.
Measurable: Always discuss goals you can measure in terms of time, money, working hours, etc.
Action-oriented: While discussing your career goals, make sure you talk about them as chunks of achievable tasks along with the action you would take to meet them happen.
Relevant: While you may have several career goals, discussing the ones that are most relevant to the position you are interviewing for will support your candidature and help you ace your job interview.
Are You Planning To Pursue Additional Education
A hiring manager may ask you this question to see if you want to pursue more education in the future and how it could affect your career. To answer this, you can describe any definite plans you have to pursue additional education and if it could advance your work. If you plan to earn more education, it could also be helpful to describe how classes or coursework could affect your working hours and how you plan to manage that.
Example answer:”At this time, I don’t plan on pursuing any additional education. I feel that the two undergraduate degrees I have in mathematics and statistics, as well as the master’s degree in mathematics, have prepared me adequately for my position as a research assistant for this school. In the future, I can potentially see myself pursuing an additional bachelor’s degree in computational science, but as for right now, I plan to solely work full time and dedicate myself to this role.”
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Common Types Of Career Goals:
While goals are broken down into the two primary categories, long-term and short-term, there are generally four common types of career goals:
Within these four types of common career goal categories are the hundredsno, thousands of different kinds of career goals.
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Having the right career goals can spark a sense of intrinsic motivation in youthat allows success to just happen on its own. Lets look at some examples ofcareer goals that you could set to talk about in a job interview or if youretrying to advance your current level of employment.
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Mention Maximum Two Goals
It is nice that you set goals for almost everything in life. But you are not required to share your complete list with your employer. Your answer must contain a maximum of two goals. This would be enough for evaluation purposes. Overexcited or lengthy answers can disengage an interviewer and at the same time, you might also lose focus and concentration.
The Best Way To Define Your Ambitions Is To Set Goals
When a hiring manager or employer asks, “What are your career goals?”, it’s best to have an answer prepared. They tend to frown upon job candidates who give them the deer-in-headlights look. Avoid this problem by building SMART goals.
It is important to note that goals are not set in stone. For example, let’s say you have a goal to be a millionaire by the time you hit 30 that’s not wholly unreasonable. As a goal, it has all the qualities it needs. For example:
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It’s specific you want to be a millionaire.
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It’s measurable you can check your financial portfolio to see if you’ve hit the millionaire mark.
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It’s attainable becoming a millionaire isn’t completely out of reach.
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It’s relevant you’re seeking employment that will provide an income that you’ll use to hit the mark.
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It’s time-bound – you want this by age 30.
However, now that you’re 29, it looks like you aren’t going to make it. That’s okay part of life is being flexible and adapting to change.
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What The Interviewer Really Wants To Know
Interviewers want to know whether you plan to stay at the company for a while, or if you’re likely to leave at the first opportunity. Asking future-focused questions during interviews is very common. For employers, this tactic helps reveal if you have any long-term visions or plans.
It is expensive to hire and train an employee. The interviewer wants to make sure that you intend to stay a while at the company. However, the interviewer also wants to make sure you have ambition and goals for your future.
How To Answer The Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years Interview Question
Its true that interviewers are looking for red flags too. Understandably, an employer wants to hire someone who is truly excited about the job and sees it as a great career move.
You may have already said that youre interested in the job and why. But they are testing you further by asking, Where do you see yourself in 5 years?. You could be unfairly eliminated if you answer this question in a way that even hints that you are only mildly interested in the job.
Hiring managers dont generally enjoy recruiting, hiring, and training new people. It can be a time-consuming, difficult and expensive process. Your interviewer does not want to invest time and effort in someone who they can tell is already planning to leave as soon as something else comes along.
After all, if they hire you and you quit after a month or two, they are going to look really bad to their bosses.
In reality, youre probably considering a few different potential career paths. It is smart for you to keep your options open to a certain extent. However, you dont have to advertise this fact in your job interviews.
The bottom line is you should never lie in a job interview. However, that does not mean that you have to be 100% candid about all of the directions that you are investigating.
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What Type Of Interview Question Is This
Whenever an interviewer asks you a hypothetical question like this, they investigate your ability to have a plan for yourself. When interviewers know that you have a plan for yourself, they can feel more confident that youve spent the time in weighing the decision to work with them.
If you can, try to integrate the employer as part of your aspirations. For example, aspiring to work with a highly collaborative company is great. Indicate to the interviewer thats why you are presently interviewing with them.
Write Out Smart Short Term And Long Term Career Goals
Answer this question for yourself first. At this stage, don’t think about how this can add value to the company or role you’re applying for: that comes later.
Do you want to change careers? To transition into a management position? To work for a particular company? To learn new skills or advance the ones you have?
For now, it’s important you establish what you want in your career in the short term and long term. Getting these down on paper is a great exercise to think and see more clearly about what you want and how to get it.
Use the SMART goals framework
Research shows that when goals are specific and challenging, they lead to higher performance 90% of the time. As an example, your goal may be “to learn SEO by the end of the year.” While this may be challenging, it’s not specific enough. Its vagueness makes it hard to commit to.
Instead, you should frame the goal as something like “For the next 12-months, I’m going to learn technical SEO by writing one 5,000+ blog post per week and completing one module of this SEO course every month.”
The second example is much clearer because it is more specific. It might seem like overkill, but when you have clarity around your goals, it’s much easier to stick to and achieve.
To maximize your chances of success when deciding on your career goals, a useful framework to follow is the SMART goals system. All your goals should satisfy the following:
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Best Goal Tracking Apps
If you want to grow your businesss sales volume and revenue then you should become familiar with the current market trends. You can leverage the industry reports, expert advice and predictions, and financial statements of market leaders. In the short term, it is a useful starting point to get benefits from others research. Moreover, you should also do first-hand research yourself by executing customer feedback surveys, vendor surveys, and make a report that will help in your decision making.
My short term goals are to simply break into the field. As a college graduate, I need to start building a strong presence in the industry, working for a company I respect and doing a job that I enjoy. My long term goals are to earn new responsibilities within the company, ultimately reaching higher positions as they open and helping the company succeed in the long term.
- Take Away Interview Tips
Align Your Answer With The Position And The Company
Knowing about the company and position is very crucial as you prepare to answer, What are your career goals?.
Talking about your professional plans that align with the position you are interviewing for reflects that you have included working there in your career goals.
It also makes you a better fit as hiring you will seem like a better decision if your goals match the company visions.
To do this, you must,
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Aspirations You Can Choose From
Having aspirations as part of your career plan is fundamental. But what about if you dont know what types of aspirations are applicable to say? Of course, you cant say that youd like to be owning the company in the future. So what do you choose from?
Here are some helpful aspirations that you can use to integrate as part of your answer to this interview question:
- Being exposed to managing a team.
- Being exposed to new parts of the business.
- Being able to gain new skill sets that are applicable to future career opportunities.
- Being able to be more hands on with the companies operations.
- Being able to obtain a stronger track record of result making.
You can make your aspirations bigger than this if youd like. For example, one day being able to start your own company is not a bad aspiration. But be sure that you indicate the timeline of that. For example, you dont want to tell a future employer that you want to start a company next year.
Set longer timeframes on bigger aspirations so that your employer doesnt feel as though you arent committed to the work youll be doing.
Select And Adjust Your Professional Goals
Identify which of your professional aspirations and goals align with what the interviewers are looking for.
This step is crucial for successfully answering questions about them during your interview.
Its not always easy to decide which of your aspirations may be relevant to the interviewers. You should adapt your aspirations to emphasize the aspects you think are most pertinent.
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Sample Career Aspirations Answers That Can Help You Win A Job
Speaking about your career aspirations can be challenging, particularly if youre still examining different career choices. In your job interview, remain focused on how youll profit from the job and vice versa. This is your unique opportunity to show the interviewer how this job will help you accomplish your career goals and aspirations and where you view yourself in the future.
Below are remarkable sample career aspirations answers that may ease your own response.
Example 1. Im seeking a way to transfer my public relations, writing, event planning skills, and media relations expertise to a position in healthcare tech. Im intrigued by the bearings in healthcare and hold a family and educational background in medicine. The possibility of working on a product that can help save lives feels very fulfilling to me. Eventually, I have excitement in operating as a communications expert and really influence how people see this amazing industry.
Example 2. Ive often loved sales and flourished on the thrill of landing new clients for my company and competing with my rivals. Your position is charming as it would present the opening for me to intensify relationships with prevailing major clients while further pursuing new clients. I desire to remain in sales for the foreseeable tomorrow. My goal will be to emerge as one of the chief account managers in your administrators, referred to as a product specialist with a powerful track record of satisfying clients.
Establish A Personal Brand
One of my goals is to establish a personalbrand to develop a name for myself in this industry. I plan to create a websiteand social media pages by the end of the year and hope to gain my first 100followers within one month of going live.
This career goal demonstrates to potentialemployers that youre confident in your knowledge of the industryso much so that you are seeking to gainexposure for your expertise.
Having the goal of establishing a personalbrand will help you feel a continual need to find new content for your followers. Not only will this help you in your own personal development andlearning, it will also lure employers who want to have a trailblazer of sometype on their team.
Establishing a personal brand is a proactiveway to control your own career development and help determine how your clientsand colleagues will perceive you. With this goal in mind, you can establish your uniqueness so you can stand out from thecrowd and draw people in.
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