Setting and Achieving Long-Term Career Goals (+ Examples)

Written by Coursera Staff • Updated on

Long-term career goals are the things you’d like to achieve in your professional life in the future. Learn about long-term career goals and how to create and pursue your own goals.

[Featured image] An employee fulfills a long-term career goal by presenting a talk to their colleagues, standing in front of a whiteboard in an uncluttered meeting room while their coworkers listen around a conference table.

Key takeaway

Long‑term career goals give you direction and can help you build the skills you need for your future professional path.

  • Long‑term goals typically take six months, perhaps a year or sometimes longer, to complete, with short‑term goals marking progress along the way.

  • People are most motivated by goals that reflect their core values, making value alignment essential for long‑term success.

  • You can begin by conducting a skills audit to identify the abilities you already have and the ones you need to develop to reach your long‑term goals.

Explore long-term career goals and how to create and work toward your own. Then, consider enrolling in the Goodwill Career Coach and Navigator Professional Certificate. In as little as two months, you can build skills to help others navigate their careers, including common career development theories, models, and tools.

What are long-term career goals?

Long-term career goals are the things you hope to accomplish in your career over time. While your career aspirations relate to your ambitions, your long-term goals are concrete achievements that you’re working toward.

Combining short- and long-term career goals

The time frame between long-term and short-term career goals is flexible. In general, you can accomplish short-term goals more immediately, while long-term goals tend to take six months, a year, or even longer to complete. As you work toward your long-term goals, you’ll often accomplish several short-term goals along the way.

Long-term career goals examples

Before we discuss how to recognize your goals, explore these examples of long-term career goals. Take notice if any of these goals spark your interest, which may indicate that your long-term goals share some characteristics with these samples.

Long-term career goals examples:

Creating your long-term career goals

Whether you are setting long-term career goals for yourself or looking for a response to the question “What are your long-term career goals?”, it can help to turn inward to find your answer.

Two things you can do to start recognizing your long-term career goals are:

  • Know your values: Typically, people are most motivated to achieve goals that connect to their values. Broadly, your values are the things that are important to you. You may value financial success, authenticity, your well-being, or the well-being of others. What keeps you going?

  • Picture your ideal future career: With your values in mind, imagine your dream career. Try to recognize the specific aspects that attract you to that vision and play around with various scenarios in which you can achieve them. For example, you may imagine being a successful business executive. What, to you, makes a business executive successful? Are there other ways to achieve a similar type of success? What is alluring about business?

Getting a clear picture of your ideal future career and the values it’s grounded in is one way to determine your long-term career goals.

Give your team access to a catalog of 8,000+ engaging courses and hands-on Guided Projects to help them develop impactful skills. Learn more about Coursera for Business.

Working toward long-term career goals

Once you have clarity on your long-term career goals, you can start figuring out how to achieve them. At first glance, some goals may feel out of reach, and that’s okay! You’ll likely have to grow into your long-term career goals by breaking them down into more manageable short-term ones.

To get started, take inventory of your skills. Research the skills you’ll need to achieve your long-term career goals, and compare that list to the skills you already have.

Through your skills audit, you’ll see exactly what you need to achieve to reach your long-term goals. You may recognize these necessary achievements as short-term goals. Your pathway to long-term success can be a stacked series of short-term goals.

You may find it helpful to organize your goals with a career development plan, a document that outlines your goals, skills, and resources to generate your path forward. 

SMART goals

One common way to frame your goals is to make them SMART:

  • Specific: Is your goal absolutely clear?

  • Measurable: Can you quantify your success?

  • Achievable: Is your goal realistic?

  • Relevant: Does your goal directly relate to your big-picture dream?

  • Time-bound: When will you achieve your goal?

The SMART criteria can help guide your success and keep you on task as you work toward your long-term career goals. However, you can find many ways to work toward your goals.

Read more: What Are SMART Goals? 

Dealing with feeling overwhelmed

Working toward big goals can feel overwhelming. In order to navigate those emotions, it’s important to remain flexible in your approach to success. Identifying the root cause of your discomfort can help you figure out your best path forward.

Get specific: What about your goal is giving you pause? Consider whether you have any other ways to work around those roadblocks. You may have more options (and opportunities) than you originally thought.

Explore your career aspirations with free resources

Subscribe to our weekly LinkedIn newsletter, Career Chat, for industry updates, tips, and trends. You can also explore free career resources to learn new topics, explore emerging industries, and discover new opportunities:

Whether you want to develop a new skill, get comfortable with an in-demand technology, or advance your abilities, keep growing with a Coursera Plus subscription. You’ll get access to over 10,000 flexible courses from industry leaders.

Updated on
Written by:

Editorial Team

Coursera’s editorial team is comprised of highly experienced professional editors, writers, and fact...

This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.