Creating Goals for Yourself Guide

Creating goals for yourself is an important skill to develop in order to make the most out of your university experience and your employability journey. In order to create achievable and beneficial goals, it is essential that you know exactly what your aims are and what you are going to do to accomplish these aims. Below you will find questions, prompts, links to help you feel confident in creating goals for yourself.

Questions

In order to create an achievable and beneficial goal, it can be useful to decide on a topic to focus on; in this case, the topic will be 'My Employability Journey'. Answer this series of questions to help you clarify your aims for your Employability Journey goal:

What stage do I think I am at in my employability journey?
What is currently going well?
What have I enjoyed so far?
What haven't I enjoyed so far?
What expectations do I have about where I would be in my employability journey by the end of my degree?
What support have I accessed to help me in my employability journey so far?
If I have accessed support, what was it and was it useful?
Did the support meet my expectations? Why or why not?
Do I feel like I am prioritising my employability journey in my degree experience?
Why have I/haven't I been prioritising my employability journey?
Do I feel confident about my progress in my employability journey?
Can I identify 3 things I have done to progress in my employability journey?
What do I want to achieve in my employability journey in the next month?
Why do I want this? How will it make me feel to achieve this?
What will I gain by achieving this?
Which skills do I already have to achieve this?
Which skills do I need to develop to achieve this?
Are there any things that might prevent me from achieving this?
How could I address these barriers or adapt my goal to work around these barriers?
Which support, services, and resources does the university offer that could help me achieve this goal?
Can I write a list of steps I need to take to achieve this goal?
What is my employability journey goal?

Prompts

Once you have worked through the questions above, you will have had the chance to reflect on your employability journey so far, determine your goal, any challenges you might face, what you need to do to achieve this goal, and the support you might need.

There is a lot of information in your answers, so it can be useful to write this down by completing these sentences:

My goal is...

I want to achieve this because...

The challenges I might face are...

I can face these challenges by...

The support, services, and resources I will access are...

These will help me achieve my goal because...

I will achieve this goal by...

If I achieve this before this deadline, I will...

If I don't achieve this by this deadline, I will...

Achieving this goal will help me in my wider employability journey because...

I will keep myself on track to achieve this goal by...

These are the questions I need to answer to achieve my goal...

Useful links

https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/careers

https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/careers/services

https://careerconnect.sheffield.ac.uk/student/home.html?currentUserLocale=en

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/nap/service/redirect/pebblepad

Once you have created a goal for yourself, it is important to give yourself the best chance at achieving this goal - this might mean you have to set mini-deadlines for yourself to keep on track. You should also be open to adapting your plan as things change/develop. Keep coming back to your goal and plan to reflect and evaluate if anything has changed.

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