Having well-defined career aspirations is critical in global leadership, so it’s natural that you might to learn what some career aspirations examples could be. To prime, career aspirations are the goals that individuals set for their professional and educational paths to attain executive positions faster. They are meant to help guide an individual’s decisions and focus their energy on achieving their desired outcome.
Setting career aspirations is important because it helps people stay motivated and focused on achieving their dreams and goals. Additionally, setting career aspirations can help individuals make better decisions about their future, the direction they want to take in life, and how they will allocate their resources to accomplish that.
Furthermore, having a clear understanding of career aspirations can help individuals better communicate goals to potential employers, stakeholders, or other people who can help them reach their career goals.
By actively setting and pursuing career aspirations, individuals can be more successful in life, at their jobs, and in the workforce. In this article, we will review key things for setting reachable career aspirations and keeping motivated and focused to achieving this long-term goal necessary for every exceptional global executive.
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Career Aspirations Versus Intentions: The Big Confusion
I remember when I was first asked in a job interview, “what are your career aspirations?”
I totally panicked. I did not know what to answer. Whatever I answered, the interviewer probably spotted that I had no idea about my real career aspirations, and I was inventing something on the fly just to get through.
Fast-forward more than two decades, I developed many employees and worked with many clients in my private coaching practice, and one thing became clear to me: a lot of people have no idea about their own career aspirations as well either.
When asked, they answer vague and subjective things like:
- Working in an industry that I’m passionate about.
- Managing or leading successfully.
- Using my full potential, talents, or skills in an exciting job.
- Starting or owning my business.
- Earning accolades for my expertise.
In my experience, these are not aspirations. These are intentions.
Intentions are attitudes, plans, or a mindset to help us fulfill an aspiration.
Aspiration is a specific goal or ambition we have. All the intention examples above could be part of the same aspiration, in fact. For example, an aspiration for these examples could be: to open a Hand & Stone Massage franchise in 5 years without getting a loan.
As you can see, intentions and aspirations are 2 different things, but they are like best friends: both are necessary for healthy professional development.
Alright, now that you get the difference, let’s be real here: when we talk about aspirations, they frequently are long-term goals. Whenever we have long-term goals, things might get in the way of making them happen. So let me give you a few tips about how to prevent it from happening, because I did not mention any of them in my step-by-step guide to reaching a long-term goal.
How To Overcome Challenges & Obstacles That May Prevent Us From Reaching Long-Term Career Goals
As I said, reaching our goals is not always easy. Life can throw us curveballs and obstacles that make it difficult to stay on track with our path to success. But with the right strategies, we can overcome these challenges and reach our long-term goals. Here are some tips for overcoming the challenges and obstacles that may prevent you from reaching your goals:
- Dealing With Distractions: The pressure of working under a deadline or completing a project on time may lead to procrastination in other areas where you have aspirations. Remember that you’re in charge of your own life, so spend time doing things of personal value. If you don’t have a full picture of what your core values are, your next assignment is defining them. You can use our article about defining core-values.
- Dealing With Lack Of Motivation: You may feel discouraged when you do not see immediate progress toward your goal. Stay positive by reminding yourself that it takes longer than you think to achieve the things that matter most. To stay motivated, split your goal into tollgates, and the tollgates into smaller tasks and activities. The more granular you become, the easier it becomes to schedule your tasks, measure performance, make consistent progress, and stay motivated.
- Dealing With Unclear Priorities: What’s your top priority this year? If you don’t know how to answer this question on the top of your head, you are in danger of not achieving any career aspiration. Career aspiration is like saving money for retirement. Both are far in the future but require consistent and persistent regular actions to achieve them. You cannot expect to have money for retirement if you try to save money 1 year before retirement. You cannot expect to achieve a career aspiration today if you did not put any work into it in the past few years either. Set your priorities clearly for each year and work diligently toward them. We’ll talk about how soon.
- Dealing With Emergencies: Emergencies are a form of distraction, but I put them in separately because not all distractions are emergencies, but all emergencies are distractions. And due to their nature, they might become a priority to resolve depending on the potential impact on your life. Emergencies must always be weighed against your priorities. For example, an acquaintance of mine started a new business in 2020 but was diagnosed with breast cancer right after. Her priority for that year was to grow her business, but this emergency made her new priority to stay well and… alive. In her own words, “staying alive trumps any other priorities in life.” This is an extreme example, though. You might have other emergencies that might temporarily distract you from your career aspirations, but that might not mean changing your priorities. Always weigh your emergencies against your top priority for that year, and always make room for your top priority.
- Dealing With Naysayers: Naysayers can be brutal when it comes to achieving career aspirations. For example, after I completed my MBA, I decided to go back to school and get a second bachelor’s degree, in accounting, to become a CPA. A very close person said, “you could never do it,” and “going back to school after your 30’s is hard.” If I had let them influence my aspirations, I indeed would never have made it. However, I dressed myself with my best positive attitude, chinned up, and decided I would make it happen, no matter what. It became my top priority over the next few years. Shielding from naysayers is almost an art, but something we have to do and be very aware of. And that’s why in my online global executive leadership program, I dedicated one full module to the “mental game” aspect, because, without it, we can achieve nothing.
- Dealing With Budget Restrictions: This is one of the most common roadblocks for a lot of people, but it’s also one of the most rewarding ones when overcome. When my father went bankrupt in 2003, I was the only family member making an income in my household. I had to find means to pay for my brother’s college, put food on the table, and keep the lights on. Back then, my personal aspiration was to get married in 2005. I was earning the purchase power equivalent of $15 or $20 per hour, which felt quite challenging to cover all this. I cut back on everything I could, worked to get promotions in my main job, side hustled, and asked friends and family for support and help. Although I got married in 2006, one year later than I initially planned, I felt pretty fulfilled because I was able to support my family, help my family members learn to support themselves in the process, and get married in the timeframe. This is all to say that restrictions can be tough but can always be overcome through hard work, support, good planning, and financial literacy. And that’s why I love the saying, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
How To Answer The Million-Dollar Question In A Job Interview About Your Career Aspirations?
After the first few interview questions, Mark, the interviewer, was content with the candidate’s answers about leadership skills and overall job skills, so he asked Jane the million-dollar question: “What are your career aspirations?” Like Jane, thousands and thousands of people stall when answering this question, or answer it lacking assertiveness, or reply with something that completely backfires against their chosen career path.
If you came to this blog post, chances are that you don’t clearly know what your career goals and aspirations are, or wanted some clarifications about them, to define what to answer when an interviewer asks this question.
In any case, there are 2 things you must consider: one is your real career aspirations, and the second is how to answer about your career aspirations in an interview. Sounds like if you have one, you have both, but that might not always be the case. Let’s see why.
Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes: imagine you are interviewing a highly qualified candidate for a Marketing leadership position that you desperately need someone for, like, yesterday! You are paying a considerable amount of money to a recruiting company, a sign-on bonus, and the entire cost of onboarding a new person. Picture the hassle and the costs of integrating one person into your already talented team and praying everything will work out just fine.
Now, picture this: you ask this candidate about their career aspirations. And they answer that they aspire to soon earn a Ph.D. and become a professor in Marketing.
What would be the next thing that will cross your mind, when they answer this?
- How long will they stay with me? Is this aspiration for next year or in 10 years?
- Will they be focused on my work if they are thinking about pursuing a Ph.D.?
- Are they too academic instead of hands-on and practical for this position?
There might be numerous things that might pop up in the interviewer’s head. I’m sure you thought something else too. When you answer this question in an interview, the answer might not necessarily be aligned with your best interests in getting the job.
So having a real aspiration and telling people about your aspirations are 2 different things. And that’s the number one reason why people stall or give very generic and fuzzy answers that might look like they don’t really know what they are talking about. Because they did not clarify for themselves these 2 separate things.
Here are some examples of what you can answer about your aspirations without having them backfire on you:
- Right now, my main aspiration is to work in a job that I love, and create a 90-Day Plan to transition to this new position as quickly as possible to bring real value to my new company. In the far future, I might explore [YOUR ASPIRATION].
- I’m super excited about learning more about this company and how it [SHARE SOMETHING THAT IMPRESSES YOU]. And in terms of long-term aspirations, I might entertain [YOUR ASPIRATION].
- I’m a very result-oriented person, so my main aspiration right now is to top perform at my new job, and create [SHARE AN ACHIEVEMENT YOU WANT TO MAKE AT THAT COMPANY]. This might provide me with the learning opportunities and management experiences to pursue in the far future [YOUR ASPIRATION].
One thing I don’t recommend is sharing an aspiration that is too conflicting with the position you are applying for. For example, if you are applying for a marketing position and dream of opening a restaurant at a beach, you might want to consider saying you’ll do that after your retirement, or not say it at all, and choose something closer to what you are doing.
I am a strong proponent that we should never lie in interviews; otherwise, we risk being recruited to a job we might hate and leave anyway. The purpose of the interview is to help a matchmaker (i.e. the recruiter) match the fitting candidates for that corporate culture and position. So if you lie, they might give you exactly what you DON’T want.
Having said that, you should also be strategic about what you say. You might be a perfect fit but be discarded just because you gave the wrong impression. So put yourself in the recruiter’s shoes and share professional aspirations that show that you’ll work hard for the company. If you want to make a first good impression, we highly recommend that you work on all the skills of The Global Leadership Pillars™: the secret success pillars of global leadership.
Now that we covered what you should say, let’s cover the real professional aspirations: what you have in your heart and how to clearly define it.
Why Do Knowing Our Real Career Aspirations Matter?
Knowing our real career aspirations matter because otherwise, we will not follow a logical learning path to achieve our future goals, which might impose unnecessary time, money, frustrations, and failures in our functional experiences. A secondary but as important reason is that whenever we know what our aspirations are, we are better equipped to align our actions with our values and personal goals, and become happier in the process.
In a nutshell, the answer is:
- it saves us resources
- it makes us happier
Wow, why did nobody explain this to me in this simple way 30 years ago? It would have saved me so many frustrations and other resources…
Anyway, this is to say that no matter where you are in your career journey or career plan, you should have a very clear picture of your aspirations and timeline for them. It’s imperative for happiness and resource management. So let’s talk about how to find or fine-tune your real career aspirations.
How To Set And Achieve Your Career Aspirations: Step-By-Step
Now that you understand the difference between aspirations and intentions, why having aspirations is important, and how aspirations are connected to long-term goals, your logical mind is asking, “how do I identify my career aspirations, then?”
The Step-By-Step Process To Identify Career Aspirations
STEP 1: Define Your Core Values
A lot of people brush this off. 30 years ago, I brushed this off. Then 20 years ago, I did it again. Then 10 years ago… (embarrassed), I did it again. I hope you don’t make this same mistake as I did, no matter how experienced you are. Don’t brush this off.
Everything starts with defining our core-values because they are the basis of our happiness. For example, respect, autonomy, and truth are 3 values that are extremely important to me. Career-wise or not, if I am in an environment or situation where any of these 3 things are lacking, it’ll drive me crazy (and frustrated) very fast.
We need to make sure that our aspirations contain or are, at least, aligned with our core-values, so that we can achieve them and still be happy. The worst it can happen is you have been working towards an aspiration for years and years, and when it finally happens, you feel frustrated and crazy sad. Nobody wants this, right? If that’s right, then you have your answer to why you should start identifying your core values.
STEP 2: Consider Your Options
One of the biggest mistakes most people make is drilling down into what they already know. Think about this: a career plan to achieve your aspiration will require a lot of effort from you: money, time, learning, experience, opportunities, connections, and so on. If you have to put so much energy into something, why not spend a little extra time thinking outside the box and discovering your real options?
For example, if you are studying Veterinary Medicine, you might aspire to become a vet doctor. But you actually have numerous other options to consider and choose from. You can be a researcher, you can be a wildlife center manager or educator, you can work in the Pharma industry, you can be a University professor, you can open an animal hospital center, you can get specialized in diagnostic imaging for animals, and so on. You get the picture. You have possibly a few dozen options to choose from.
Outlining your options allow you to rank them in order of interest, and review how your strengths and interests align with each option.
STEP 3: Connect With People Who Achieved Your Aspiration
This might sound obvious, but some aspirations are stories we build in our heads. We assume certain things about what it’s like, and put them on a pedestal for the wrong reasons. Imagine going through all the trouble and using so many resources, as I mentioned, only to find out that it’s nothing as you imagined.
I will give you an example that happened to me: very long ago, one of my aspirations was to move to and live in another country for a more extended period of time. Because I participated in many exchange programs, and traveled extensively around the world, I had a fixed idea about what being an expatriate would look like. So much so, that I skipped this step altogether. Once I achieved my aspiration, immigrated, and lived in another country for a longer period of time, I finally realized that it had nothing to do with what I originally expected, especially the first 3 to 5 years. And that was because of the “stories” I created in my head, based on past experiences and anecdotes from third parties.
Don’t make this same mistake. Take your time to reach out to 3 to 5 people, at least. They will function sort of as a career mentor, which will improve your career success likelihood. Find people who achieved that same aspiration and interview them about what’s like. LinkedIn is a great resource for that. I recently met a lady from Iran, who moved to Canada and contacted me about what it’s like to work with global leadership. She found me through LinkedIn.
After step 2, choose 3 or 4 top aspirations and connect with people. Take your time to talk to these people and demystify your aspiration. Trust me, even things that might sound super obvious to you are certainly a bit mystifying. Take your time to learn more about your aspiration and go back to steps 1 and 2 to reassess.
STEP 4: Choose A Feasible Top Priority
Once you’ve gone through this process, you’ll be closer to finding out which path to go. My recommendation is to choose something that is aligned with your values and excites you, especially after your conversations with the connections in step 3. It must also be feasible. If you have an aspiration that is not feasible, then it’s not an aspiration. It’s a dream. Dreams are crazy good when you are in the dreamland, not the real world.
To be feasible means to be achievable. This means there are ways to find time, money, resources, and connections to help you achieve that aspiration on top of being physically possible for you. I once wanted to complete a certification that required lifting 40kg in the final exam as part of the exam process. Unfortunately, that was not possible for me. This is almost how much I weigh myself, so it’s impossible for me to lift that much. That certification could not be my aspiration, not how it was structured back then.
When choosing your top priority, make sure it’s feasible. If it’s not, it’s a waste of energy and effort to work on it; avoid yourself the frustration. Choose something else that also excites you. I am sure there are millions of things out there that are as interesting and exciting to be your top priority. Don’t be like a stubborn teenager who wants to keep trying something just because they can’t have it. You are a pro now. Pros use their resources — including time — wisely.
STEP 5: (OPTIONAL) Find An Executive Coach
I highly recommend finding a kick-ass executive coach to help you drill down into your aspirations for an executive-level position (or which level you are aiming for), and creating a Career Development Plan. This plan will contain your current skill map, your career progression with essential skills to pursue and experiences to grow from, and your entire career path — from an entry-level position until your final professional aspiration.
By diligently mapping out your career path and having a plan, choosing the right management experiences, positions, and challenges will become much more straightforward, and your chances of career success will skyrocket.
Examples Of Career Aspiration
Now let’s assume you understand a little more about career options, and your career aspirations, and know how to identify them, but still, you want some examples of a primary goal or aspiration to compare to your own ideas.
Here are some aspirations that follow each graduate’s sector career development:
Graduates From Business School
- Get an MBA with a focus on Controllership after 10 years of finance experience, and a Ph.D. after 20.
- Become a CXO after 15 years of Sales experience and other lateral departments like product management, product launch, account management, pricing, and partnerships.
- Drive a start-up in the tech industry, providing AI solutions for the health industry.
- Open a SPA & Oasis center in the far suburbs of NYC for corporate events.
Graduates From Health Backgrounds
- Become the top-known geneticist in South Africa after 20 years of medical practice.
- Create an exceptional blog on rare hereditary diseases containing at least 200 articles about different rare diseases that become a reference to the American Medical Association.
- Become a clinical trial director in the Pharma industry after 15 years of challenging experiences in Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 trials.
- Become a business owner of and/or manage a reference Emergency care facility for blunt traumas near the Grand Canyon.
Graduates from Engineering, Tech & IT
- Become a well-known space-industry SME (subject matter expert) with innovative programming capabilities for automated navigation.
- Win a noble prize for an AI application for drone delivery for humanitarian purposes.
- Create an architectural structure capable of surviving an 8.0 Richter scale earthquake, without structural damage, in Turkey.
- Obtain an international award for a revolutionary App integrated with the Workday HR management system.
Graduates From Fashion, Marketing, Field Of Design & Creation
- Create an award-winning fashion bag for corporate women using 100% recycled raw materials.
- Introduce a highly profitable marketing agency franchise winner of a prestigious award in the field.
- Create a viral piece of art that is liked and shared by more than 2 billion people.
- Organize and lead a fashion event in the top 5 most fashion-oriented countries.
Graduates From "Life"
- Create a highly profitable and well-known Youtube channel showing your love for your otter.
- Introduce your family’s exquisite recipes heritage by opening your own Armenian restaurant.
- Deliver and raise 3 happy children and invest in their unique talents.
- Provide value to your community members through a local church, school, association, or local initiatives assisting immigrant orphans.
What do all these career opportunity examples have in common? They are specific. Quite specific. Your aspiration must be specific and follow the SMART goals as much as possible, when creating them with the 5-Step Process mentioned above:
- S – It’s Specific: You have a detailed definition of what this aspiration is, what it will accomplish for you, and why it will make you happy.
- M – It’s Measurable: You’ll be able to actively measure how close you are to your aspiration and what the achievement looks like in practice when it happens.
- A – It’s Achievable: Your aspiration is feasible and attainable, both physically, mentally, and resource-wise, including time.
- R – It’s Reasonable Or Relevant: Some achievable things might not be realistic for you. They must be relevant and reasonable to you; otherwise, it’s no good as part of a smart goal.
- T – It’s Timebound: you have a timeline for this aspiration, including a tentative deadline for when you’d achieve it.
Now that you have some examples, a process to identify your own aspirations, and a clear picture of what to expect, it’s a matter of rolling up your sleeves. Are you ready?
Final Remarks
So what’s your main takeaway from all these points and stories? My main takeaways are:
- Have a clear aspiration; be real and avoid the fluff.
- Know your core-values like the palm of your hand.
- Set your priorities straight and have one main professional goal per year that works towards your top career aspiration.
- Have a prioritization system to tackle emergencies and develop supportive habits toward your primary goals.
- Work on your mental game, resilience, and leadership capability.
- Avoid listening to naysayers.
- Focus on finding solutions, not complaining about the problems.
- Have a detailed career plan and at least one career mentor.
- Find supporters and people you get motivation from to ensure long-term success.They function as accountability partners.
- Be careful when talking about your aspirations during job interviews.
If you are looking for a professional to help you drill down into your career aspirations and define your Career Development Plan with you, you can hire me as your executive and development coach. Have a free strategy call with me. We will go over your unique needs and get you started working towards your career aspirations like a Pro.
If you are interested in taking a step further and developing specific global leadership skills, on top of defining your career aspirations, check out our online Global Executive Leadership Program. We go over all 4 Success Pillars™ in The Global Leadership Pillars™, our proprietary leadership learning methodology, during 9 online modules specially meant for global leadership.
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