Welcome back to another touchpoint in our series – post-graduate tips for navigating this era of time! Today, we’re here to provide you support in beginning to identify and move toward your goals. While goals are not the ‘end all be all’ of success, and it is the road that takes you toward that goal where you experience the most significant growth, they are a good driving force for your next step. Is your goal to secure a full-time role? Identify a new city to move to? Make 5 new friends in a new place? Become a runner? Join an intramural league? Pick up an instrument? Find a hobby? Whatever it is you’re looking to accomplish, we encourage you to follow along below to learn about how SMART goals can benefit YOU!

What are SMART Goals?

The SMART Goal Definition and its synonyms:

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic, resourced, results-based).
• Timely (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive). (from “MindTools”).

SMART Goal Application…

So, let’s start off with grabbing your closest notebook, planner, Google document, or another form of paper and writing down some goals. Are you focusing on your health? If so, maybe stating the number of times you plan to go to the gym, for a set amount of time to build muscle and achieve an increase in weights, is an excellent place to start. Suppose you’re seeking a job promotion in the next few months. In that case, setting a goal to spend x amount of minutes extra completing additional work, asking for feedback x amount of times per week, or aiming to achieve the placement in 6 months are measurable ways to hold your goal accountable! One last example, if your priority for the year is to find a new position, network with x amount of new people per week, engage in x amount of coffee chats or informational interviews, or otherwise work to apply to x amount of jobs per week to achieve a new position by x date are great ways to start compiling a timeline to keep up with.

For those of you that are starting fresh on your job search, then tracking your skills and finding an area of career interest is the perfect next step for you. LinkedIn, for example, provides dozens and dozens of courses through which you can build new skill sets to differentiate yourself from other candidates! These are all great resources to explore new skills without committing to them in a full-time role. Make sure to also take advantage of online assessments to identify and be able to speak to your strengths and areas of opportunity – many of these translate well into different roles even within one industry! Take marketing for example, someone who excels creatively would thrive in an agency developing campaign creatives. However, someone who is highly skilled in analytics could benefit from analyzing that same campaign from a results standpoint.

The most important aspect of goal creation is that it is a unique and individual journey for any person. Your goals will not be the same as those next to you, last year or next year.. and that’s okay! Creating and transcribing your goals at the beginning of this year is a great way to map out your next few months, create a measure of accountability, and get excited about what’s to come.