Your perfect response to answering “What are your career aspirations”?
As a job seeker, it’s important to have career aspirations.
Why? Because career aspirations are a roadmap for our future.
People, when meeting professionally are often curious about future aspirations. In reality, this is because they tell people a lot about who we are, based on the things we want.
This is also unsurprisingly true when recruiters ask about career aspirations, which in itself is a strategic move.
What are your career aspirations?
Career aspirations are indicators of the career path you want to follow and the goals and dreams you hold professionally and want to achieve.
What a person wants to achieve determines what they regard as important. This forms their values system. Values inform people, particularly recruiters about character.
Typical career aspirations include pursuing higher education, job promotions, achieving managerial or directorial status, learning a variety of skills, or establishing one’s own enterprise through entrepreneurship.
How to identify career aspirations?
Identifying your career aspirations can involve multiple avenues.
Self-reflection
Identifying career aspirations involves self-reflection of core values, personality and interests. Are you interested in a particular industry or occupation? Why? Do you have a knack for logical and analytical corporate activities or are you more of a creative, independent free thinker?
Self-reflection also involves examining your natural inclinations, that is, your natural strengths and skills that you can perform well, develop and earn a living. Asking yourself the following questions can also help in the self-reflective process:
- If money was not an issue with you, what would you spend all your time doing?
- What sort of life do you want to be remembered for?
- What activities bring you the most joy and fulfillment?
- If you could choose one thing to do and know you couldn’t fail, what would you choose?
Perform research
Researching opportunities within your local job market can identify available possibilities. From these possibilities, you can develop career goals to work towards and achieve.
External guidance
Identifying career aspirations does not have to be a lonely process. You can enlist the guidance of career coaches, mentors, industry and community leaders as well as persons you look up to within your network to help establish career goals and aspirations.
Practical experimenting
Sometimes people just don’t have an idea of what they want. Until some people have gathered working experience, it can be difficult to identify what they’re good at.
Determining career aspirations sometimes means getting out there and seeing what interests and fulfills you. This can be through employment, volunteer, travel or networking. If you don’t have your career aspirations right out of school, that’s fine. Put yourself out there and experience what works for you.
Why do interviewers ask what are your career aspirations?
Recruiters want to know your career goals for a variety of reasons:
Loyalty towards the job
Recruiters ask about career aspirations because they want to know that, whoever they hire actually wants to be there and has intentions of building a strong working relationship with their company.
Goal-oriented
While your employer may not expect you to spend a lifetime in one job position, they are inquisitive to know your career aspirations to determine your ambition level and desire for achievement.
What kind of relationship will we have?
A company cannot grow while its employees remain stagnant. Asking about career aspirations therefore is a prelude to the working relationship with you. If you have no aspirations or goals, how can you possibly propel the company forward?
How to answer what are your career aspirations question?
Now that you understand why employers ask, it is critical that talking about your career aspirations should not sound selfish. Instead, incorporate the company into them. You will have a much easier time securing a job opportunity once the company believes they are part of your overall vision.
Plan in advance
It never looks good in an interview to be stumbling over questions. Recruiters know when you’re making something up as opposed to having a well-prepared, genuine answer. Plan what you’re going to say in advance. If you’re seeking an eventual managerial role in this industry, mention how your time at the company will be utilised in learning, applying knowledge, gaining experience and accomplishing eventually this goal.
Show the alignment between yourself and the company
Aligning your career goals with those of the company can sound like something along the lines of:
“I understand the company wants to become a market leader within this industry. I am also looking to one day be a leading professional in this field. I believe by working together, I can learn and leverage my skills to bring this organisation to a position of market leadership, while gaining the needed experience to distinguish myself as a market expert”.
The recruiter wants to see a fit. Illustrate clearly how your career aspirations fits perfectly with those of the organisation.
Speak their language
Research the company’s mission statement, corporate goals and the job description and list the specific keywords that are important. Incorporate them when describing your career aspirations. In this way, you are demonstrating goal alignment between yourself and the company. By describing your career goals using their words, you are speaking their language. Once you can speak their language, you can work in their company.
Things to not do when speaking about career aspirations
When answering this part of the interview, certain things should be avoided:
- Don’t be dishonest about your goals by making up ideas you think the recruiter wants to hear.
- Don’t downplay the position you’re applying to as a “convenient stepping stone to your success” or “a move towards bigger and better things”.
- Being ill-prepared. Have a well-thought answer prepared beforehand
- Don’t ramble about every single goal in great detail. Keep it concise and chronological
- When talking career aspirations, leave compensation and other benefits out of the explanation. Focus on gaining experience and professional development.
- Don’t compromise loyalty by mentioning leaving this job “for something better”. Emphasise that, despite having career aspirations, you value each job experience along the way, including this one.
