Do you have a goal that you want to accomplish in 2024? Maybe it's a personal goal. Maybe it's a career goal. Maybe it's a goal related to your time as a grad student. Regardless of your goal, one of the keys to completing your goal is to make it smart. And today that's what I'm going to be going over.
And today, that's what I'm going to be going over. My name is Dr. Matt Carlson, and this is the Grad School Sucks podcast, the show for academics and PhDs who want to take their career from academia to industry, to the business world, to the private sector. And today, we're going to talk about SMART goals.
Several years ago, I used to be a practicing clinician, and one thing that I found as a therapist is that people have a lot of different goals that they want to accomplish. Some of the goals are lofty, some of them are practical, but one of the key things that it takes to creating and completing a goal that you want to actually finish is to make it SMART, and SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound.
And I'm going to go over each one of these and how this applies to you potentially taking your career to industry in 2024, if that's what you want to do. But first, here's an example from me. I want to reach more people with my content in 2024. That's the goal that I set for myself this year, and that's what I look forward to accomplishing.
But that is a really vague goal. How do I reach that goal? How do I know when I get there? There's really no value to a goal that's as ambiguous as that.
Because there's no definition to it, there's really no way for me to know the progress that I've made towards it, and there's no road map to help me get there. So let's change that goal by making it smart. The first one is specific. If I want to reach people with content, I need to think about where is that content going to be.
Is that going to be a blog post, a LinkedIn post, a tweet, uh, something on Instagram or Facebook? And for me specifically for this year, I chose to reach more people on Instagram.
And even within Instagram, there's multiple kinds of content that you can create to reach people. And the one that I'm going to be focusing on this year is Reels, those short form videos on Instagram.
Alright, the next part of the SMART goal is measurable.
And for the merit measure And for the measurable portion, you want to think about how to add numbers and quantify your goal and the path that it is going to take to get you there.
So for this goal of mine to reach more people with my content in 2024, we've already made it more specific by saying we're going to do that on Instagram, specifically, and through short form video. Let's make it measurable.
And for me, measurable means two things. It means what's the actual goal, the number goal, and then what is the actual steps to get there. And so the number goal for me is going to be doubling my following.
And that's going to be completed by posting reels every day. I'm going to post one reel every day, Monday through Friday.
The next part of SMART is the A and that stands for achievable. And that's basically, and that's basically a check to yourself to see if this goal is actually achievable.
And when I think back to the end of 2023, I've really had some high expectations for myself. For myself, in terms of creating content, I wanted to create content two to three times a day, Monday through Friday, and then at least once on the weekends. And frankly, that's not feasible for me. I have a nine to five job.
I have a son and a wife. I have a family.
And all of these things take time.
And so creating multiple pieces of quality content during the week and then keep making more content on the weekend, frankly, was something I just couldn't keep up with. But I think it is totally doable to create something once a day, Monday through Friday. That is what I'm going to be doing, and I do believe that's achievable.
And the last one is relevant. And that's the question of
Is this goal and the path you're going to take to get there actually relevant to you and your life? Does it make sense? Does it accomplish the things that you want to accomplish?
And for me, the things that I've set up so far for this Instagram goal for me this year are relevant because Instagram is the platform where I've found the most success and Reels specifically are the kind of content that I've had most success with over the past year.
Lastly, the T in SMART stands for Time Bound.
And that simply means to put some kind of deadline on yourself as to when you want to have this accomplished, or at least set up some milestones. So for me, and my Instagram goal for 2024,
I want to have established this routine of posting once a day, Monday through Friday. By the end of January and then continue it for the rest of the year.
And so if we were to step back, my original non smart goal was to reach more people with my content in 2024. And now, after making it smart, my goal is reach 2024, specifically by doubling my following on Instagram. through posting reels once a day, Monday through Friday. I'll make time for this by going to the gym one hour earlier every day.
And this makes sense because Instagram is my most successful platform, and reels are the type of content that performs the best. And I want to have this Monday through Friday routine established by the end of January and continue it for the rest of the year. That's a SMART goal.
But let's talk about something that's maybe a little bit closer to home for you.
Maybe you just graduated in December of 2023. Or maybe you're going to graduate in May or August of 2024. And you need to get a job.
If that's your goal for this year, let's think about it and make it smart. Of course, smart starts with specific. Let's talk about what kind of job do you want. Do you want an industry job or an academic job? If you want to go industry, what kind of sector do you want to go into? Do you want to go into marketing?
Do you want to go into general business? Do you want to go into healthcare or tech?
If you want to get an academic job, what kind of a position are you trying to obtain?
And also for industry, if you want to go into industry, what is the specific job title that you want to get?
And for the sake of this example, let's say that you want to go industry, you want to go into the marketing space, and you want to get a position as a data analyst. That is a specific goal, much more specific than get a job in 2024.
So let's talk about measurable. In order to get a job, you need a job offer. And of course, you should probably only have one job at a time. But that's going to require at least one offer. But do you only want one offer? Do you want to get multiple job offers? And how many jobs do you want to apply to in order to make that happen?
If you only want to apply to a couple jobs, then you're probably going to need to do some massive networking in order to make those applications super successful. And get lucky. But on average, people tend to apply to one to two hundred job openings in order to get one job offer.
So for the sake of this example, let's say that you want to get three job offers by applying to two hundred open positions. Next is the A, which is achievable. Is this actually a goal that can be practically that can be practically achieved?
Now, this is really going to come down to your competitiveness and the state of the job market.
And the way that you're going to know if this goal is really achievable for you in 2024 is to talk with Ph. D. s from your field who have already gone into industry and they have the roles that you're trying to apply for. They'll be able to tell you what your resume needs to look like, what kind of jobs you should be applying for, and what kind of upskilling you need to be doing in order to be competitive.
I cannot say it enough, networking with PhDs who are already in the kinds of jobs that you want is an incredibly valuable resource.
Next, the next letter in SMART is R, which stands for relevant.
And I think for this kind of a goal, to want to get a job this year, the questions that I would ask for relevant are, does this type of career path that you're selecting really fit what you want out of life? Is it going to give you the kind of salary you want? Is it going to give you the kind of work balance you want?
What about career and intellectual satisfaction? What about the location that you're going to live in? And of course you can't have everything, but does it check enough of the boxes for you to be happy with the situation you'll be in?
Lastly, is T or time bound? And this really just And for this I'm wondering, when do you want to get the job? When do you want to start applying? When do you want to start doing the prep work? On average, it's going to take you from when you first start working on figuring out what kind of a job you want, putting together a resume, doing some networking, and applying, to actually starting that job.
That period of time is probably going to be about six months.
So if you wanted to start a job, say, in December of 2024, you're going to need to start working on that this summer.
So let's put it all together. The original example goal was get a job in 2024. And now your smart goal is get three offers for data analyst positions in marketing as a result of submitting 200 applications. This seems achievable. Based on what PhDs from my field who have data analyst jobs in marketing have told me.
This will meet my goals for a career because the salary will be fair and the work life balance will be good. And I want to start the job by June, which means I need to start doing the prep work today and start applying in March. That's a smart career goal.
So, what are your goals for 2024?
And are they smart or how could you make them smart?
If you're watching this on YouTube, let me know in the comments below.
And if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to leave me a like on YouTube or drop a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
And lastly, if you are interested in taking your career to industry this year in 2024,
Then I highly recommend that you find a roadmap to take you there.
A list of tasks that walks you step by step through everything that you need to do to get ready for the industry job market.
And if that's something you're looking for, then I recommend you download my six week checklist. It is a free PDF guide that will show you the steps that PhDs can do to get ready for the industry job market and maximize their chance of getting a job.
I'll put a link in the description of the episode that you can click and download that if you would like to.
Thanks for watching or listening. Have a great day and I'll see you all next week where you will be hopefully one week closer to your 2024 SMART goal. Bye.