Setting a Grand Goal for Your Career

Job hunting without a career plan and a specific objective in mind is like beginning a cross-country journey without establishing a destination or selecting the most direct interstate highway in advance. In both cases, your efforts will be aimless and inefficient. Therefore, before beginning a new job search, you must firmly fix in your mind a short-term objective for that job search consistent with a long-term objective for your career, your "Grand Goal."

This Grand Goal is the position in which you want to be at the pinnacle of your career. If you are near the pinnacle of your career now, then your Grand Goal will also double as the objective of your next job hunt. If you are still early in your career, then the objective of your next job search is a position that will take you one giant step closer to your Grand Goal. Such a position should be consistent with your goal in that it will provide additional experience required to attain that goal.

Setting your Grand Goal is something that only you can do. Some people are lucky enough to know exactly what they want to do with their life from the moment they graduate from high school.



Unfortunately, most of us don’t know our goals immediately and change jobs several times and whole career fields once or twice before we think we know what we want. Others never know what they want and only change jobs out of boredom or of necessity if they are fired or the company goes bankrupt.

Part of the explanation for these career wanderings is that we become different people as we mature. One characteristic that usually separates a very successful person from an also-ran is that the former normally has a master plan for his or her life complete with a long-range goal, short-range objectives in support of that goal, and a timetable for everything. If you do not have a plan, you are planning to fail.

SETTING YOUR GRAND GOAL

If you do not have a Grand Goal for your career then proceed no further in job hunting until you do. To help crystallize that goal, fantasize. Assume you have no educational or financial barriers. If you could choose, what would be the perfect job for you? In what vocational role can you see yourself as being very comfortable and happy? What position in the working world would give you maxi mum satisfaction?

Then ask yourself the following questions:

1. Specifically, why is that the perfect job for you?
   
   
2. Does this perfect job make use of your Special Ingredient? If not, discard that job as a candidate Grand Goal.
   
   
3. Which additional personal strength and skills would such a job make use of? What weaknesses must be improved upon?
   
   
4. What would be the primary source of enjoyment for you in that job?
   
   
5. Are you moving in the direction of that goal now? If not, why not?
   
   
6. Is that goal a logical extension of your current experience? If not, what experience must you first obtain?
   
   
7. What are the requirements within the company or the career field or business world to achieve that goal? How can you satisfy those requirements?
   
   
8. What barriers do you see in achieving that goal and how can they be overcome?
   
   
9. What sacrifices will you have to make to achieve your goal?
   
   
10. Is achieving your Grand Goal worth the sacrifices and the effort of overcoming the barriers? If not, then that goal is not sufficiently attractive to you, and you need to find a stronger one.
    

The goal that prompts the strongest affirmative response to question 10 is now your desired destination in life and your Grand Goal. From this moment on, every job change you make in your career must take you one logical step closer to reaching that goal, If it doesn't, then it is not a worthy alternative.

Sample Grand Goals might include the following: president of the company, the best salesperson (or secretary or accountant) in the company, self-employment, or, simply, a financially secure retirement.

1. President of the company:

Getting to the top of whatever ladder you are currently climb ing is always a laudable goal. If that is your goal, recognize it, and start working toward it today.

2. Top salesperson or secretary or accountant in the company:

Unfortunately, it is common within our society to assume that achieving success demands that you become a member of the management structure. This should not be the case. Success is achieving the goals you set for yourself. Some of the most rewarding jobs, both financially and psychologically, can be no mismanagement. It is simply a case of becoming the best at whatever it is that you enjoy doing.

3. Self-employment:

Fully 80 percent of the American working public would like to be in business for themselves. However, most of them will only dream about it because, while the desire is there, the commitment and plan of action are not. For those who do attempt self -employment, most will travel a very rocky road and will have a high probability of failure. One reason is that these people did not obtain enough relevant experience to obtain the proper skills and self-confidence in the employ of someone else before striking out on their own.

4. Financially secure retirement:

Some people will put up with any form of working misery for 40 years just so they can collect a regular stipend from the company after retirement to be able then to do something they enjoy. I don't agree with this attitude toward work despite having heard it often. I think you should arrange to enjoy your job and career while also satisfying your financial needs after retirement, even though it does require more effort. However, the point of this step is to recognize the Grand Goal in your career, and then aggressively and systematically pursue it. So, if a financially secure retirement is the most important thing in life for you, look for the company with the best retirement plan and take any job offered. You may even want to work for the U.S. government.