What are short-term career goals?

All goals have a deadline associated with them, but career short-term goals have a much shorter timeline. They’re usually things your employees can master in weeks or months as opposed to long-term goals, which can take several months or years to achieve. You can think of short-term professional goals as the smaller steps an employee needs to take to achieve a long-term goal. For instance, if a new employee wants to move into a leadership role as a long-term goal, their short-term goals could be things that can help them get there.

Why are short-term career goals important?

Short-term career goals can benefit individual employees and your organization as a whole. Some potential benefits include:

• Mindset shift: Having goals can motivate employees and get them excited about work. You might notice that employees are more ambitious and have an improved outlook at the office. Achieving smaller goals can also give your employees the confidence to go for even bigger ones.
• New skills: Many short-term goals center around gaining specific skills. These new competencies can help employees improve their job performance, and your company can benefit from those additional skills by filling gaps.
• Career advancement: Easily achievable professional goals can help employees advance in their careers. This might mean taking on a new role in your organization or taking on a leadership role within their current position to gain experience.
• Improved focus and organization: Working toward one or more short-term goals can improve focus and organization. These skills transfer to regular work duties and can help employees be more productive and effective.

Examples of short-term career goals

Short-term career goals can vary depending on the industry and field. Choosing achievements also depends on the individual’s desires and their long-term career plans. The shorter-range goals are stepping stones for the longer-range goals, so they should relate to and support those bigger dreams. Some short-term career goals examples include:

• Earning an online certificate or completing an online training course
• Building a portfolio to show off skills
• Establishing a mentor relationship to learn specific skills
• Joining a professional organization
• Networking to make more connections in the industry
• Improving work-life balance
• Increasing work productivity
• Improving accuracy, sales numbers or other performance indicators
• Implementing organizational strategies

Helping your employees set short-term career goals

Some employees set short-term career goals themselves and pursue them aggressively. Some need a little more encouragement. Working with all of your employees on career short-term goals can push everyone toward improvement. It also shows your employees that you care about their growth. These tips can help you support your employees in developing smaller, short-range professional plans.

1. Encourage reflection

Your employees might not know where to start with developing short-term career goals. Guiding them and encouraging reflection can help them identify strengths and areas for growth. Interest inventories can spark ideas for employees who don’t have a clear direction. You might also encourage them to look several years into the future to think about what they want to get them to identify smaller objectives.

Meeting one-on-one with your employees gives you a chance to encourage this reflection. You can share your perspective on their strengths and how you think their career could progress. If an employee has an idea but doesn’t know which way to go, discussing it with you can give them clarity and direction.

2. Discuss career paths

Helping employees explore different career paths within the company and industry can make goal-setting easier. Newer employees might not be familiar with the hierarchy or the growth possibilities within your company. Finding new roles they might want to pursue can guide goal-setting to give them the skills to get there.

3. Align goals with company values

When employees set individual career goals, they need to be things they can relate to. However, it can be useful to incorporate your company’s core values, vision and purpose. This strategy can support your operations while helping your staff expand their skills. Ideally, your employees will already embrace your core values and goals, so their individual goals should mesh well and benefit both parties.

4. Guide but don’t control

You often see the potential in employees or have ideas of what you think they should want. It’s also tempting to steer them toward outcomes that benefit your organization the most. While many employees appreciate the guidance, you ultimately want them to pursue goals that align with their values and preferences.

People are more likely to follow through with meaningful goals that they choose. If you force a goal onto an employee that they’re not sure about, they might come up short or put less effort into it. While you can help your employees come up with plans, it’s ultimately up to them to achieve them.

5. Break down the steps

If an employee already has ideas for goals, either short-term or long-term, assisting them in sorting out those ambitions can result in effective, concrete objectives. They might know what they want to accomplish but not know how to get there. Or they might have lots of short-term goals, but they’re not sure in which order they should tackle them. Help your employees create an organized plan with small, achievable steps to get them started.

6. Create away to evaluate progress

Using the SMART goal format can give your employees a framework for monitoring and achieving their goals. Under this method, the goals should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-based

Focusing on making the goals measurable and time-based can push your employees toward success. Help them set a realistic deadline for the objectives based on how much work it takes and what their schedules look like. If they want to earn an online certificate related to your industry, look at things like when the program is available and how long it takes to complete. If it’s a self-paced course, consider how much time the employee has to complete the work.

Knowing when the employee has achieved a goal can vary based on the goal. Earning a certificate or completing a class is easy to evaluate. Expanding your professional network can be a little more subjective. You might set a specific number of connections the employee should make to consider the objective complete.

7. Provide support

Being involved in your employees’ short-term career goals makes it easier to tailor your training and development to support them. The way you support individual plans can vary, but examples include:

• Providing resources like new apps and software
• Paying for training programs or certificates
• Allowing a set number of paid professional development hours during the workday
• Setting up a mentor program
• Offering on-the-job training in a different role or department
• Encouraging knowledge sharing through peer-to-peer learning
• Bringing in speakers or trainers

Asking your employees how you can support their goals can reveal strategies you wouldn’t think of yourself. Simply checking in with your employees regularly to see how they’re progressing toward their goals can be a form of support.

8. Know when to shift

Regularly working on short-term goals with employees lets you encourage them to continue growing and setting new goals. You might also find a situation where an employee needs to change directions or set different goals. Perhaps their original choses weren’t as achievable as they thought. You might need to adjust the plan, break it down into smaller steps, extend the deadline or scrap the goal completely and try something different.

Sometimes employees realize their original goals aren’t inspiring and don’t align with what they want. You can revisit your initial conversations about their objectives to figure out a better option for them. Goals can change frequently as you start working toward them, so being flexible and providing ongoing support and advice can help keep your employees on track.

9. Set your goals

Leading by example with your own short-term career goals can encourage your employees. If you already have goals you’re working on, talk about them with your employees. It shows them that you can continue growing and that goals are for all levels, even people who are already in leadership roles. Your goals could be inspirational for team members who eventually want to achieve your career level.