Careers centre
Defining your goals
What do you want to do?
There’s no such thing as the perfect job, flat or partner, they say. And it’s most definitely true that aiming too high in a professional context can lead to overshooting. That said, ambition is easier to cut back than it is to bump up. So the golden rule when defining your objectives is this: think big, and then scale down.
Think big:
Spend some time defining what you would like to do in an ideal world. As well as the plentiful careers tests you can find online, you might find that the following questions are useful in helping you begin:
- What would you do if money were no object?
- What would you do if you didn’t care about what other people thought?
- What would you do if you knew there were currently positions available?
- What sort of thing have you most enjoyed/been good at doing in the past?
- Which new skills would you most like to learn?
Scale down:
Thinking about what you’d do if you had no limitations is all very well, but constraints do exist, and you’ll have to get round them. The trick is finding a pragmatic way to do so that allows you to preserve the most important elements of the ambitions you listed above.
- Research your market
Check out job sites (such as, of course, JobisJob) to find out what’s available in the market. You might be surprised - if your dream is to be a media mogul at an international newspaper, you’re probably a way off, but looking up “journalist” brings up quite a few options.
- Be open-minded
Don’t be afraid to spend time looking through other options with no fixed direction if your attention is diverted.
- Long-term plans
If you find a job that you like but don’t have the necessary experience/qualifications, see applying for a similar position as a future goal:
• If a job needs a qualification, would you be able to get it?
• If you need specific experience, could you get this elsewhere? (voluntary work, more junior positions…)
• If it requires you to change city, would this be an option?
• If the salary is low, would the future prospects be worth it?
There’s no such thing as the perfect job, flat or partner, they say. And it’s most definitely true that aiming too high in a professional context can lead to overshooting. That said, ambition is easier to cut back than it is to bump up. So the golden rule when defining your objectives is this: think big, and then scale down.
Think big:
Spend some time defining what you would like to do in an ideal world. As well as the plentiful careers tests you can find online, you might find that the following questions are useful in helping you begin:
- What would you do if money were no object?
- What would you do if you didn’t care about what other people thought?
- What would you do if you knew there were currently positions available?
- What sort of thing have you most enjoyed/been good at doing in the past?
- Which new skills would you most like to learn?
Scale down:
Thinking about what you’d do if you had no limitations is all very well, but constraints do exist, and you’ll have to get round them. The trick is finding a pragmatic way to do so that allows you to preserve the most important elements of the ambitions you listed above.
- Research your market
Check out job sites (such as, of course, JobisJob) to find out what’s available in the market. You might be surprised - if your dream is to be a media mogul at an international newspaper, you’re probably a way off, but looking up “journalist” brings up quite a few options. - Be open-minded
Don’t be afraid to spend time looking through other options with no fixed direction if your attention is diverted. - Long-term plans
If you find a job that you like but don’t have the necessary experience/qualifications, see applying for a similar position as a future goal:• If a job needs a qualification, would you be able to get it?
• If you need specific experience, could you get this elsewhere? (voluntary work, more junior positions…)
• If it requires you to change city, would this be an option?
• If the salary is low, would the future prospects be worth it?
