Setting S.M.A.R.T goals for career development

By Alicia Brickey

The average American is putting in over 2,000 hours a year toward building their career. With this much time being devoted, career development isn’t just another “to-do”, it’s a “must-do”, especially if achieving maximum success & potential from time invested is your goal.  Career management, including strategic planning to obtain new skills, capabilities, and experiences, is one of the most important steps toward achieving professional growth. To achieve this, you must think S.M.AR.T. (Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound)

Be specific. Your goals must be clear. Know what you’re doing, what you want to achieve, and plan accordingly. Make it easy to get where you want to go, by defining exactly where you want to end up.

Be Measurable. Measure your progress. It’s important to establish a logical means of executing your goal, so it gets done. If your have no clear path to measure progress, its easy for efforts to become less productive, and can easily veer off track. Also, means of measurement can provide you with motivation, and set the pace for the remainder of the goal execution.

Set Attainable goals. Before creating your plan of action, make sure you have the resources, authority, and time. Make sure the possibility is easy to reach. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving, you will only demoralize yourself and your confidence. Make sure you have all means to support your potential success.

Stay relevant. Your goals should be consistent to where you want your career to take you. Professionally and personally.

Set time bound goals. Get on top of time management. By committing your goals to a deadline, it will be much easier to complete all necessary means of achieving said goal on time.

Be S.M.A.R.T. Take the lead on your own destiny. Only you can prompt the proper growth & success needed for your career, especially your position.