Graduate students and PhDs can benefit immensely from goal-setting and a career planning process. Often times you are challenged by competing priorities: e.g. teaching a class, class projects, dissertation work, and career development as well as taking care of your personal wellbeing. It can be difficult to know if you made progress on long-term projects such as an ongoing research or your dissertation work. And sometimes goals may need to be changed or altered due to changing situations or expectations. In an article posted in Science the authors mention the importance of self-reflection and realistic goal setting for time management and career development and recommend the use of an Individual Development Plan (IDP)-for those in the sciences field. For graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, there is a similar web-based career development tool called Imagine PhD.
Both of these tools are free career planning tools that can be tailor to fit your career planning needs. You can set your own self-defined strategic goals to keep you on track and both includes resources to guide you through the process. Some of the goals from Imagine PhD are listed here. You can add new goals in different categories: degree completion, career development, skill development, personal development, and money/funding. For each, you can set a date range for when you want to complete each goal and set reminders for yourself and link your calendar to the plan. For example, for degree completion goals you can indicate: advisor determined, coursework completed, or dissertation chapter written, etc. For career development goals you can choose: conducting informational interviews, practice interviewing, or creating and updating your LinkedIn profile.
Set your SMART Goals:
To help you work on your academic or career goals it is important to set SMART goals. As a student put it in the Science article, “It took me 2 months to write the first draft of my first paper. Some delay was procrastination, because the initial blank sheet of paper felt so daunting. When I set goals that were more specifically defined, with realistic deadlines, I could approach each goal more confidently. As a result, my writing progressed much more efficiently overall.” If you identify an overarching goal and create an action plan you are more likely to achieve your goals in a timely way.
SMART goals should be:
S – Specific – Is it focused and unambiguous?
M – Measureable – Could someone determine whether or not you achieved it?
A – Action-oriented – Did you specify the action you will take?
R – Realistic – Considering difficulty and timeframe, is it attainable?
T – Time-bound – Did you specify a deadline?
For example, if you want to build your professional network, then you may have three SMART goals for the year: (1) attend one event per month (for example, your departmental social hour or an industry networking event) and talk with at least two people at each; (2) present a poster at a conference in your field; and (3) do three to four informational interviews with professionals in your field.
Assess Your Skills and Gain New Ones:
Gaining transferable skills (e.g. presentation skills, research skills, leadership skills) and also assessing the skills that you already have developed are also very important and can be easily tracked through IDP and Imagine PhD. It is important to get training, practice, and get feedback for the skills that you want to develop. And as the Science article points out, it is also important to stay accountable for your SMART goals. This can be accomplished by joining a peer-mentoring group or having a project-buddy that you identify for a certain goal.
For example, on Imagine PhD you can choose a job family for careers that interest you and for each job family the website recommends resources and tips on developing your skills. For Build Skills in Consulting the resources provided are: Alumni Conversation: Community Engagement, Training: Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) Academy, Training: Consulting Magazine, and Sample Business Problem Sets from Mindsumo.
My IDP also allows you to make a checklist for skills you want to improve in different categories, for example, research skills may include doing an experimental design or statistical analysis. And under Career Exploration tab, they include a resource for Consider Career Fit based on your skills, interests, and values. Once your career fit is revealed you can than go to Read About Careers Resources to find more about that career. For example, if you choose Principle Investigator in a research intensive institution, you are recommended a number of articles and books: “Making the Leap to Independence”, “Are You PI Material? Assess Yourself”, and Academic Scientists at Work: Navigating the Biomedical Research Career.
Celebrate Achievements and Evaluate Your Plan as you Move Forward:
As you progress through your SMART goals it is important to celebrate the goals that are accomplished. Give yourself a reward after accomplishing each goal. Checking off a SMART goal from your list will also give you satisfaction and a sense of progress. Also, don’t worry about revising some goals when a new critical deadline arises or your research doesn’t go as planned. And if you do need to revise a goal, ask yourself why you are changing the goal. Was the original goal unrealistic? Am I managing my time effectively enough? Am I prioritizing my goals and projects appropriately? Are urgent tasks overwhelming my professional development goals? If so, what can I do to ensure that my professional development remains on track?
I hope this helps you set your own goals for the new year as a grad or PhD student! If you have any questions or would like help setting up SMART goals for your career development you can book an appointment with me on Handshake.
