How to Set and Achieve Career Goals as a New Graduate

Introduction

As a new graduate, you’re entering a world where career success depends not just on talent, but on your strategy.

Here, strategy is a fancy buzzword which practically means: the ability to set and achieve goals. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Goal setting gives your career a clear direction. Without clear goals, it’s easy to drift from job to job, losing control over your career and becoming thoroughly commodified.

Remember: corporations want to turn you into a human resource. Your job is to resist and overcome this natural market tendency with clever means…

Turn the tables with the corporate world, so to say…

Why Goal Setting Is Crucial for Career Success

It allows you to measure progress, make adjustments, and ensure that every career move you make builds towards a larger objective.

Without defined goals, you risk wasting years in roles that don’t enhance your skills or align with your values.

Also worth noting – especially for new graduates: having specific career goals creates a competitive edge, as it demonstrates initiative and foresight to future employers.

Common Mistakes New Graduates Make in Goal Setting

Many new graduates fall into the trap of setting vague goals, such as “getting a good job” or “earning a high salary.”

While the intentions behind these vague goals are valid, they lack the specifics needed to make a difference. Such goals simply turn into wishes and daydreams.

Others may set overly ambitious goals without understanding the milestones required to reach them, leading to frustration and burnout.

By the way, ambitious goals are perfectly fine as long as you don’t try to achieve a three step outcome in just a single step. It’s fine if you want to be a Fortune 500 CEO – but it’s not going to happen straight out of your “junior sales associate” job. Trying to get such a job in one step is foolish. Trying to get it with two other stepping stones is much more plausible.

Finally, an all too common mistake is failing to adapt goals to the changing job market. Your goals are not static objects, but living, evolving and ever adapting heuristics that help you achieve the success you desire and deserve.

Know Yourself Before Setting Goals

In the context of your career, knowing yourself means: know what you’re good at, know what you’re bad at, and know what you value.

Assessing Strengths, Weaknesses, and Interests

Before setting career goals, have a solid understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, and interests.

Self-assessment tools like personality tests or skills inventories can provide insights into what roles align with your natural abilities. Knowing where you excel and where you need improvement helps you set targeted goals.

Aligning Goals with Personal Values and Long-Term Vision

Of course, your career goals should reflect not just what you’re good at, but also what you value.

Doing what you value is the only path to fulfillment. (Yes, we realize that’s a bold statement, but sit and think through that sentence for a few minutes, and you’ll understand.)

We cannot provide you specific guidance around your values. The only tip we can offer is: what you value is a decision.

Human beings chose to value what we value. Sure, we may have tendencies and proclivities, but these are not values. Once we decide on a particular value – be it aligned with our tendencies or against it – our minds get made.

Before setting your career goals, make up your mind. Know what you want.

Importance of Being Selfish and Shallow

It’s important to judge what you want. But perhaps not in the way society advocates.

In fact, we want to do the opposite…

We want to capitalize the shallow nature of human motivation to accelerate your career. Chasing tangible, external rewards sharpen focus and drive ambition.

Make no mistake: Society rewards visible success – so it’s perfectly acceptable to aim for the corner office over mastering the craft of sales or management. It’s not about being virtuous; it’s about maximizing your outcomes.

Mastery vs. Performance Goals

In the literature related to setting and achieving goals, there are two categories of career goals: mastery-oriented and performance-oriented.

Here’s how they differ (source):

Why It’s Better to Focus on Performance Goals

Research shows that – to the dismay of many idealists, egalitarians, and altruists – performance goals more reliably predict success than mastery goals in professional and academic settings (source).

Or to put it simply: shallow goals beat idealistic ones.

This is because, while mastery goals focus on self-improvement, performance goals focus on outcomes that matter to employers and peers – results that are objective, visible and measurable.

For example, if you have two goals: Become the best salesperson (mastery goal) or become the top salesperson by revenue (performance goal) – the latter is much more likely to push you to make moves that lead to tangible career success.

Therefore, when it comes to your career goals, it’s ok to let your baser instincts take over.

People have brains that make us shallow, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s ok to go after the corner office instead of worrying about becoming the best sales professional. It’s ok to want to be the top executive in your company, rather than mastering every detail of business management.

Targeting titles, status, and visible success is normal – and it’s exactly what gets rewarded! There’s nothing wrong with aiming for the power and recognition that come with being at the top.

Remember, the brain is wired for short-term rewards and external validation. Let these natural tendencies work for you. Pick external, concrete, tangible, specific and measurable goals like getting the promotion, earning the bonus, or landing a high-profile project ensures you are maximizing your career growth.

Short-Term vs Long-Term Career Goals

Beyond making sure you have performance oriented goals, you also need to think about the time horizon…

Figuring out how to juggle your immediate career goals with your long-term ambitions can be tricky, but it’s essential if you want to make real progress.

Short-term goals – like getting a raise, moving to a better company, or building new skills – are all about securing what you need right now.

Long-term goals – like running your own division or landing a C-suite role – are about where you want to end up.

The key is to make sure that every short-term win gets you closer to that bigger long term goal.

But… Not so fast.

Reality Check

While we fully want you to have ambitious, exciting goals that make your skin tingle; we don’t want you to be deluded. We want to make sure that you understand the environment in which you are setting your goals.

Here’s the reality: opportunities aren’t what they used to be. The job market is crowded, especially with boomers sticking around longer, and with companies constantly downsizing and reorganizing.

Plus, we have the whole AI and de-globalization trends we need to discuss…

As one study points out, “With the glut of baby boomers in the job market and the trend towards corporate downsizing and re-engineering, there are fewer advancement opportunities, fewer goals to achieve, and therefore greater potential for career frustration” (source).

This is why it’s more important than ever to think strategically.

If you’re chasing short-term gains that don’t line up with your long-term vision, you could end up stuck. Make sure that every move, whether it’s getting a new certification or taking on a leadership role, is positioning you for the future you actually want.

The SMART Framework for Effective Goal Setting

OK. You have picked your performance oriented goals, both short term and long term. At least in principle…

How exactly are you going to set them?

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound (SMART) Criteria

The SMART framework is a useful tool for setting all types of goals. In fact, it is so useful that it has become a bit of a cliche. Which is good – some cliches are cliches because they work really well.

Each component of SMART serves a purpose:

• Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve.
• Measurable: Establish objective criteria to measure and track your progress.
• Achievable: Ensure your goals are possible and attainable.
• Relevant: Align your goals with your broader career objectives. (Hint: short term goals that help your long term goals.)
• Time-bound: Set a deadline to create urgency.

How to Apply SMART Goals to Career Development

To effectively implement the SMART framework in your career, we recommend an extremely advanced trick…

Make sure to write down your goals and review them weekly, or at least monthly.

This practice is backed by research; we know that those who write down their goals achieve higher success rates compared to those with unwritten goals (source). We also know that those who provided weekly progress updates to a supportive friend accomplished more than those who only wrote their goals down or kept them private (source).

The going theory is that accountability and public commitment work toward achieving goals. And in our experience, simply writing down goals and observing them – even when done in private – is more than enough for effective goal setting.

Example – A Brief Roadmap for Professional Growth

Let’s do an example…

Meet Jimmy

Jimmy is a 26-year-old marketing coordinator at a mid-sized e-commerce company.

Fresh out of a decent university with a marketing degree, he’s already feeling the pressure to prove himself, realizing that he is in a cutthroat environment and the clock is ticking. Jimmy likes storytelling, and thinks he could become a “big shot” in his industry one day – but he’s often overwhelmed by all the details of his job and cannot practice his craft to get ahead. He knows he needs to set some real goals, or he will get swallowed whole by this never ending cycle of busy-ness.

Goal Setting Strategy

To help Jimmy set effective career goals, here are the top three guidelines form our discussion above:

• Shallow: Jimmy should start by being shallow. Instead of aiming for lofty goals like “becoming a better marketer,” – which he is likely repeating because he heard someone “impressive” talk up such goals – Jimmy should target goals like “landing a high-paying job in digital marketing” or “getting a certification in SEO just to boost my resume.” These are the kinds of goals that might get eye rolls from the self-proclaimed gurus, but they’re all about grabbing attention and maximizing his marketability. It’s not about depth; it’s about the rewards that come from looking good on paper and standing out in a competitive field.
• Measurable: Each goal needs to have quantifiable success criteria. For instance, if Jimmy enrolls in an SEO course, he can measure success by whether he completes the coursework and passes the final exam. These metrics keep him focused and provide a sense of accomplishment.
• Alignment: Jimmy’s short-term goals must be aligned with his long-term aspirations. If he envisions becoming a digital marketing manager within five years, his short-term objectives should build the necessary skills, credibility markers, and experience to reach that goal.

Jimmy’s Goals

Now, let’s see how Jimmy can translate this thinking into specific goals:

1. Prioritize Skills Development: Within the next three months, Jimmy should sign up for and complete a certification course in SEO. This aligns with the principles behind the Five Core Skills and Seven High Value Disciplines by making sure he is developing a skill that is in high demand.
2. Secure a High-Visibility Project: Over the next six months, Jimmy should proactively seek out and take the lead on a major marketing campaign at his company. This campaign is crucial for visibility within the organization, and will give Jimmy ammunition on his resume.
3. Get “Digital Marketing Manager” Title: In the next three years, Jimmy should secure a promotion to a Digital Marketing Manager role.

Jimmy In Action

Of course, setting these goals is meaningless. Goals need to be followed by immediate and persistent action.

Goals are achieved via habits.

Here’s how Jimmy can establish ongoing habits to stay on track with his intelligently set goals:

• Weekly Goal Review: Set aside time each week to write down and review his career goals. And by write down we mean yes, write down, again, on paper, and by hand – because this works the brain in a special way (source).
• Monthly Progress Check: At the end of each month, assess where he’s at and what he’s accomplished.
• Skill Building Sessions: Set aside time each month for skill-building sessions, such as online workshops, classes or tutorials. (Having the time already scheduled ahead of time is the most important part of the habit.)
• Accountability Partner: Find a friend to share his goals with. Jimmy should schedule quarterly check-ins with his friend (i.e. accountability partner) to discuss progress and hold each other accountable.

Conclusion

In our hyper-competitive world, setting and achieving career goals isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential.

Key Takeaways for Effective Goal Setting

• Be Brutally Honest: Set goals that are aligned with your true values and aspirations. Don’t sugarcoat what you want – be straightforward with yourself.
• Focus on Shallow, Performance-Oriented Goals: Choose materialistic objectives that are tangible and measurable. Aim for outcomes that elevate your status.
• Align Short-Term with Long-Term Goals: Short-term goals feed directly into your long-term ambitions.
• SMART Framework: Articulate your goals such that they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
• Write Them Down, Keep Writing Them Down: Put your goals on paper. Regularly re-write these goals, over and over and over again…
• Take Action Right Away: Don’t wait for the “perfect” moment. Start working toward your goals immediately, even if it’s just a small step.
• Make Accountability Inevitable: Surround yourself with people or systems that will hold you accountable for your progress. Share your goals with a friend and/or mentor.

Yes… True… It might sound overwhelming.

Interestingly, those who find all of this excessive are often the same people who believe a $15 million annual salary is too extravagant.

Also interesting… For someone who sets the right goals, that $15 million isn’t excessive at all. 😉