Career Goals
This type of goal focuses on building skills, earning certifications, or expanding your network in the near future.
What is a short-term career goal?
This is the consistent, authentic image you create that highlights your strengths, values, and unique contributions to employers and networks.
What is a personal brand?
According to Jobvite (2023), this percentage of recruiters use LinkedIn to find and vet job candidates.
What is 93%?
These are skills developed in one setting — a job, sport, volunteer role, or class — that can be applied in many different careers and industries.
What are transferable skills?
Every strong resume bullet begins with this part of speech, such as "Led," "Developed," "Managed," or "Launched."
What is an action verb?
This type of goal describes where you want to be in your career 5–10+ years from now, such as becoming a department director or launching your own business.
What is a long-term career goal?
These are the three platforms where your personal brand is most visibly expressed, according to CareerOneStop.
What are your resume, cover letter, and online profiles (especially LinkedIn)?
This is the term for the trail of professional and personal information about you that exists publicly online.
What is your digital footprint?
A student who organized a campus fundraising event built THIS transferable skill while managing volunteers, timeline, and budget.
What is project management (or leadership/organizational skills)?
This formula — Action Verb + Specific Responsibility + Quantified Result — is the gold standard for writing these.
What are strong resume bullet points?
Locke and Latham's research shows that goals with these two qualities consistently lead to higher performance and satisfaction.
What are specific and challenging goals?
Brooks and Anicich (2023) found that having a strong one of these drives career outcomes and professional visibility.
What is a personal brand?
This section of your LinkedIn profile — the prime real estate at the very top — should include your identity, career direction, and 2–3 specific skills.
What is your LinkedIn headline?
NACE (2023) consistently ranks these three as the top competencies employers look for in new graduates.
What are communication, teamwork, and critical thinking?
Adding a number, percentage, dollar amount, or measurable outcome to a resume bullet point is called doing this to your accomplishment.
What is quantifying (or adding metrics to) your experience?
This self-assessment step — examining your skills, interests, values, and motivators — is the recommended starting point for meaningful career goal-setting.
What is a personal self-assessment (or self-reflection)?
A 2–3 sentence summary that communicates who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring — often used as your "professional elevator pitch."
What is a personal brand statement?
These are the four recommended LinkedIn sections that SOSC225 students are encouraged to complete for a strong professional profile.
What are the Headline, About/Summary, Experience, and Skills sections?
When a student says "I've just worked in retail," they may be underselling these skills that are highly valued in virtually every professional field.
What are customer service, conflict resolution, sales, communication, and time management? (Accept 2–3)
A resume bullet that reads "Responsible for helping with various tasks" is an example of this type of bullet, which employers typically skip over.
What is a weak (or vague) resume bullet point?
According to Steel and König (2022), goal-setting improves this ability, which helps professionals stay focused and navigate unexpected career shifts.
What is adaptability?
Gorbatov et al. (2021) described personal branding as this type of review — meaning it draws from psychology, marketing, management, and career development research.
What is an interdisciplinary review?
This practice — where you use a professional photo, complete summary, skills endorsements, and regular activity — is called having one of these on LinkedIn.
What is an All-Star (or complete and optimized) LinkedIn profile?
This process — where you take stock of your skills from all life experiences and intentionally match them to job requirements — is often called one of these audits.
What is a transferable skills audit?
This strategy — tailoring your resume language, keywords, and skills to mirror the specific job description — significantly increases the chances of passing this automated screening system.
What is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) optimization strategy?