Examples of Career SMART Goals

SMART Goals

Goal setting is one strategy successful entrepreneurs set for themselves to help them achieve their long-term plan. However, goal setting is more than just saying “I want to be rich.”

Business coaches and consultants refer to SMART career goals when working with clients. You don’t need a coach to come up with a good plan, but you can learn from their strategies.

SMART is an acronym for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

If your goal is focused on a new product, starting a business, or promoting in rank, every goal you set needs to be outlined into these five categories to help your dream become achievable. Keep your motivation in front of you at all times. Review other examples of career SMART goals to get an idea of how to write yours.

Specific

“S” stands for specific. Though it is great to say “I want to succeed,” succeed is such a vague term and can mean anything from finding your first client to owning a billion dollar corporation. While setting goals, aim for a specific achievement.

Weight loss is a good example of using specific goals. You can say “I want to lose weight,” but the question is “how much weight?”

A specific goal tells you exactly what you want to happen: "I want to lose 10 pounds."

Other examples of specific goals include:

• I will graduate from college with a degree in business.
• I will clean my house every day.
• I will sell $1,000 in retail every week.
• Our team will accomplish $10,000 in sales each month.

Measurable

Now that you have your goal, you need to be able to measure it. You define the measurement by answering a few questions:

• What are you going to do to achieve your goal?
• How will you measure your success?

If your goal is to make $1,000 this week, what will you do to make it?

• I will make two appointments a day, and follow up.
• I will measure my success based on my sales and commission check.

You now have a measurable plan.

Achievable

Goal setting is important to reaching your dreams, however, you need to make sure it is achievable. It is very easy to make an outrageous goal. If it is your first year in business saying, “I will make $500,000 profit my first month,” is most likely unachievable. A new business takes time to build, and most businesses do not make a profit their first few years.

When a goal is to large, many entrepreneurs give up as soon as they realize they will not attain their goal and may feel like a failure. In reality, they are not a failure; the goal is just too much for their resources.

Reasonable and Realistic

“R” can stand for either “reasonable” or “realistic”, which both mean the same thing in this situation. When setting goals, make sure you are making reasonable goals for yourself and anyone else involved. Like an achievable goal, it needs to be “realistic”. Not only do you have to be able to achieve it, you need to want to achieve it.

Ask yourself if this is something you can really accomplish, or it is just ridiculous. For example, saying “My first job will pay over $500,000 a year” is not realistic in most professions. Be reasonable about your experience and degree.

If you are expecting a baby, don’t expect to promote to president in one year. Look at your goals and make sure they fit into a realistic picture.

Timely

Now that you have set your goal, included a timely deadline for when you will accomplish your goal. For example, “I will promote to a supervisor by August 1, 2008.” Without a “deadline”, you could work on your goals for years without getting very far. Setting your deadline makes it more real.

Now that you know when your goal will happen, you want to break it down into smaller time frames with goals attached. These should include:

• Daily goals
• Weekly goals
• Monthly goals
• Yearly goals
• Timely goals
• Long-term goals

Examples of Career SMART Goals

Now that you know what SMART stands for, here are some good examples of Career SMART goals:

• I will promote to a manager by June 2008.
• My team will rank in the top three for 2007.
• I will earn my company’s Top 10 bonus awards this month.
• My business will open the doors no later then April 1.

Now that you have your goal, remember to break it down into steps to achieve it. Set those smaller goals to help you attain your focus as if you are climbing a ladder.