Unfortunately, there are only a few people who walk straight into an ideal job, get promotion followed by promotion and quickly find themselves in their dream job. In fact, does anyone?! Most people will need to decide on their career goals and then plan a way to achieve these goals. Sounds like a daunting task, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be. As with most things about universities or careers, we are here to help!

Before you can achieve your career goals, you need to decide what they are – an obvious point, we know, but one that is often overlooked. What interests you? What opportunities are there in the field that interests you? And what is achievable for you? These are just some of the questions you should consider when setting your career goals. You might also want to consider the time frame in which your goals are achievable – it is a good idea to have short-, mid- and long-term career goals.

Once you have thought about all of this and decided where you want to end up, the next step is to work out the best way to get there. What training might you need? How will you pay for any college or training courses you go on? It might be useful to work your way back from your long-term career goals, one step at a time, deciding what the preceding step should be.

There are heaps of things you can do to help you on your journey to achieving your career goals, alongside your careful career planning. Professional social networking sites, like LinkedIn, are great ways of following up any connections with any senior colleagues or developing inter-company relations. The wider you can make your professional network, the greater your opportunities are for career development.

Don’t forget, you will spend a large proportion of your adult life working (unless that lottery ticket gets lucky!) so it really is worth investing time and effort from the start to get yourself on the right path. Having said that, there is nothing to say you can’t deviate from your plan if other opportunities arise – you can’t plan for everything! But think of your long-term career goals as a destination you want to get to – without planning a route you might still get there but you’ll be more likely to waste time wandering aimlessly or getting lost.