Career goals vs career impact
A career goal is the tangible aspect of career progression. The salary, the house, the bonus, the promotion, the title, the corner office, the five-star holiday, the roaring ovations when you achieve your next big win. Everyone wants to progress and achieve in a career and meet their goals and expectations. It brings personal fulfilment, it makes your family proud, it enriches the life of your family, or adds positive elements to our lives. Achieving career goals is hard but rewarding.
Typically, this is what everyone seas most often on the outside. Often, this is what fascinates the majority, and it is easy to quantify and comprehend. It is often flashy and brings security and happiness to one’s life. It is the arduous work and sweat you put in all these years in education, training, and work.
Career goals may change and depend on varied factors. Different people may have different goals based on personal preferences, life, and career stages. Career goals are short to medium term long. They also may change more frequently and adjusted strategically.
On the other hand, career impact is long term. It goes alongside of achieving career goals. The impact made here is visible but also sublime or intrinsic. It may also aid as a motivating factor to achieve career goals and even goals in personal life. If at achieving career goals is not moving or there is setback, having the long-term career impact vision is useful. A temporary setback is just a tiny pothole in the long road ahead.
Making a career impact is how you contribute to making your industry, profession, organisation, society, move further, and get better. This is what you give back on top of your immediate professional contribution. Different to personal wins and focused on the wider picture. It could be making improvements in the profession, workplace, mentoring other people, or other aspects. It is more slow, hard to always quantify, and not always possible to achieve. But it is worth the try. In the end, you are not only an employee of the month but in the hall of fame.
Career impact examples:
- Making contributions to make improvements in your profession.
- Making contributions to make improvements at your firm / workplace.
- Making efforts to mentor other professionals.
- Making contributions to improve society.
Achieving your career goals is hard and achieving career impact is even harder. Make a head start, start achieving your career goals, and make lasting career impact by finding your next job opportunity at Gazette Jobs.
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