What is Your Career Goal – This bouncer interview question forces a candidate to share his future professional plan and where he wants to see him or her down the line in life. A well-crafted answer can impress the interviewer and help you ace the interview also.
The term “Career Goal” is a very important factor as it explains a Professional’s well-thought plan for his professional life and Interviewers love to know and understand this answer before taking a final call.
As an interviewee, you are taking up interviews to make a career. After graduation everyone search for a job, this is where a career starts. What kind of Job interests a student? What is the job he wants to do for the rest of his life? These are the questions that decide a student’s career. A career changes the student into a professional, a question regarding a career plan or goal decides how well a student is matured and focused enough to take up a job. As a fresher, your career goal is very simple and crisp. You need to know how to frame the answer for the “What is Your Career Goal” question in the right sense.
Yet some other questions which relate to the future fall into this category. To answer this question, one should be more focused and clear on the short-term and long-term objectives.
When employers ask What is Your Career Goal (Long term or short-term goal), then they are just trying to make sure that your goals must be similar to what the company is looking for. Your answer to this question will show your stability and it makes them decide whether you are a good fit for the company or not. Because as for most of the company employee is acting as an asset and they look for that employee who will be stable. So whatever you say about your goal and if it is matching or similar to the employer looking up, it will indicate that you could succeed at this company.
So instead of telling your personal goal which sometimes leads you to rejection, you must have to set your goal or aim according to the company profile and the job nature, once you do you will succeed in the interview process and you can grab the opportunity.
After knowing the Job nature and the company profile try to connect your career goal answer to the job you’re applying for. Talk about your learning skills and bring up those skills and traits that you have which would help you accomplish the job. You can also divide your goal into two-part- long terms and short-term goals. You can tell your long-term goal as a personal goal or whatever you want. But Short term goal you have to tell in such a way that which match and line up with the company.
The answer can be like, as a fresher you will not have an entry to climb the career ladder. So, the short-term career goal is getting into a Job in a prospective company. Convey to HR the goal in a positive way.
Don’t say your long-term aim is to start a company. This will not give a good impression in all the interviews. Mostly try to avoid it, because you apply for a company to work not to learn and start a company of your own.
Be positive in all the answers, don’t give answers in such a way it will lead to more questions.
What the interviewer is looking for is an answer that demonstrates, you will fit into the role you’ve applied for, will carry out the role for a reasonable period of time, i.e. long enough so they don’t need to find a replacement for you in a few weeks or month, etc. It is asked often enough that it’s good to have the answer ready before each interview, I would guess I am asked this or some variation of it.
Use this question as another chance to sell some of your qualities, such as determination, hard work ethic, etc., and also show off that you know a bit about the company and the role.
You need to contemplate and figure out what exactly you are looking for. If ‘getting a job is your short-term goal then what kind of job interests you? What do you plan to achieve once you secure the job?
It is difficult to flesh out an answer but if you prioritize things, you would be able to come up with an appropriate statement for this question What is Your Career Goal.
