Career Goals Essay Examples

I am at the determining stage wherein I’ve to decide what I would be doing to make better my walk of life. I have a great urge towards pragmatic industrial work environment and therefore I wish to pursue Doctor of Philosophy in Business Program. I pen down this essay to describe my professional experience and career objectives that motivated me to apply for this program.

I’ve earned Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and Masters in Industrial Engineering. Acquiring a PhD degree in Business would assist me in pursuing a career as a Engineer. On the other hand, my career vision is to become a Product Manager and finally to assume a position as Director managing cost related projects. However, I am certain that if I do not complete my PhD degree I could never have the opportunity to achieve my career goals.

As a Product Engineer in my company’s Receiving Inspection department, I’ve had opportunity to work with Director of Supplier Quality who is a Execute PhD Business graduate. I’ve been inspired by his achievements, which are similar to my career goals, and hearing from him about his PhD experience has led me to consider PhD in Business as my next career step. My discussions with him have brought me to realize that, in order to advance from my current position as Product Engineer with cost reduction projects to Product Manager, I need to grow in three areas: management theory, hands-on experience, and international perspective and networking.

Coming from a multidisciplinary background which combines undergraduate studies of Mechanical Engineering and Masters in Industrial Engineering, as well as experience in Manufacturing sector, cost related projects and business development, I hope that Cumberlands multidisciplinary approach will enable me to better utilize my knowledge. PhD in Business Curriculum at Cumberlands and the opportunity to take online courses will leave me considerable freedom to take finance, accounting, and management courses. I need these in particular to evolve my viewpoint from the tactical Product Engineer view I hold today to the strategic Manager view I’ll need to manage larger processes. In addition to this theoretical knowledge, I want to practice for Leadership Development & Research how to think and act like a CEO: strategically, in real time and with confidence. Both my current position as a Product Engineer in the Medical Device Manufacturing and my desired post-PhD position as Product Manager require team management. While today I use intuition and experience to guide my activity, I plan to strengthen my skills by learning formal methodologies at Cumberlands and benefiting from personal experiences of classmates and faculty. I feel that such knowledge will help me do my job effectively and achieve my long term objectives.

In future positions I will be faced daily with situations which require interpersonal skills: interviewing a job applicant, rewarding an employee, providing constructive criticism, etc. I look forward to improving my “soft skills” by taking classes at Cumberlands and I can refine my skills with “hands on” experience in a forgiving environment. Product management and my subsequent positions also require close interaction with departments such as finance, marketing, sales and R&D. I will need to understand the activities of these departments, best practices for interacting with them and how to take them into account in decision-making.

I learned that an important part of being a manager is developing vision, knowing not only what your business unit is doing next month but also what you think it should do three years from now. The job requires developing a road-map and setting milestones that will lead to long-term objective while keeping short-term goals in mind.

In conclusion, I believe that studying at Cumberlands will be a great experience and will allow me to develop a multi-disciplinary creative approach that will provide be with a better framework to achieve my goals. Moreover, it will provide the optimal accomplishment for my first short-term objective, as well as a significant advancement towards achieving my long-term career goal.