What does goal setting refer to in a career context?

In a career context, goal setting can refer to several different things depending on your overall goals (obviously!) and what you are trying to accomplish in your career and in your life in general:

Your goals might be short term or long term or a combination of both. Hopefully you'll be planning for the long term while realizing that short term decisions may help or hurt your ability to reach the longer term goals you set out for yourself.

Here are some types of goals you might set for yourself related to your career.

Monetary Goals

How important is money to you? Certainly we don't work for free but for many people there is more to life than simply the amount of money they earn.

On the other hand there isn't necessarily anything wrong with goal setting that relates to the salary you want to earn by a certain age or the amount of money you want to have in the bank by that time.

While it might be easy to say that "I'd do that job for a $100K" there are some jobs that might not be worth the hassle, the stress, the grief and everything else that goes along with it even for that amount of money.

Some jobs on the other hand might be ones you'd do for freeor thereabouts. Obviously you'd have to really love that sort of job to suggest you'd do it for free but finding a job you love can go a long way to reduce the importance of money in your career.

Material Goals

Related to monetary goals, you might have goal setting in place that relates to material goods that you want to acquire in your life.

Maybe you want to own a house(s) and have a nice car(s) and a summer home(s) and other things by a certain point in time. Certainly your earning power will determine your ability to reach certain material goals you have set out for yourself.

Your career decisions such as the jobs you accept, the education level you achieve and the companies you choose to work for can go a long way to determining whether or not you have the means to achieve your material goals.

If not, you'll need to figure out whether your material goals get lowered or if you need to increase your income and if so, how.

Level of Position Goals

How important is your job title to you and your position in the company?

Climbing the corporate ladder is an example of goal setting related to your desire to move up in the corporate world and achieve a certain level of position or job title.

To some people job titles and corporate ladder climbing is important, to other people, not so much. You'll need to decide for yourself.

When you're busy with your goal setting, consider what is important to you and try your best to realistically determine the path to get there.

Remember that career decisions and choices you make now can impact you later in life.

Carl Mueller

My name is Carl Mueller and I'd like to thank you for learning a bit more about me!

I feel that I have numerous relevant experiences during my career that come in useful when helping people with their careers:

I know what it?s like to work internationally, having worked overseas (in New Zealand, from 1994-1998).

I've survived several corporate downsizings while many of my colleagues were being laid off.

I have also experienced being laid off twice myself during corporate downsizings.

I know what it?s like to be self-employed.

I've helped many people find better jobs. I started to work as a professional recruiter in 2000 first as an Information Technology (IT) recruiter and then in general recruitment across many industries including IT, manufacturing and marketing. Since this time, I have helped many people find their dream career and it?s a great feeling.

I experienced one of the slowest hiring periods in recent memory especially during the general hiring slowdown that followed the Y2K frenzy in 1999, the bursting of the dot com bubble in early 2000, and then the employment market bottoming out following September 11, 2001.

These were certainly not great times to be a job searcher in most industries nor was it a particularly good time to be a recruiter.

Following this, I began running the day to day operations of an Internet-based company in early 2003 that focused on developing online software and subscription-based websites for consumers. It was then that I fully realized the power, usefulness and potential of the Internet which really spurred me to set up my own website which you can view in my Personal URL section below this bio.

I?m also a Platinum Ezine Articles Expert as recognized by EzineArticles.com, one of the most visited websites on the Internet. This special designation is earned by having consistently high-quality articles published and viewed on their website. All of my submissions are related to helping you find your dream career and many of my articles get reproduced on other websites by their webmasters.

Good luck with your career and I hope I have been of assistance to you!