Effective Tips On How To Become A Career Mentor
Career mentoring takes a commitment to help others, an investment of time and a lot of patience. Besides boosting your own professional development, Career mentoring will also allow you to help others. It offers numerous benefits to others including career advancement and greater compensation growth. As a result, there are various factors that must be taken into consideration before becoming a career mentor:
1. Do you have the time available?
Career mentoring requires constant commitment of time. This is primarily because the mentor invests time and bets that with the help they are offering, the mentee will make progress in his/her career. Time commitment is one of the main challenges that most career mentors face.
2. Is it easy for the mentee to contact you (reach out to you)?
Determined students will overcome any barrier to reach a teacher, even unreturned messages or a cold reception. However, the mentor should not make this necessary. You should be friendly, interested and warm. Stop everything you are doing, give your full attention and make clear eye contact when the mentee asks for a moment of your time. Therefore, you should do everything possible to keep your appointment with your mentee.
3. Respect the mentees time
Every mentor expects their mentee to be fully prepared for all meetings, arrive with relevant questions at hand and ready with all assignments. As a result every mentor should try and show the mentee the same respect. Therefore, you should know what you expect to accomplish during the meeting before hand and understand all the points you want to discuss.
Every mentor should possess a vital set of skills to ensure that they actually help the mentee advance their career and also accrue some vital benefits to their own personal lives and careers:
- Establish clear guidelines: It is vital to be clear with the mentee on the amount of time you have available, discuss the need for conversations and confidentiality, and also where you will hold your discussions.
- Teach but don’t tell: you should help your mentee determine precise answers by learning to ask questions that allow your mentees to explore situations instead of just telling them what to do.
- Be honest and open: Help your mentees learn using your own successes, failures and experiences.
- Observe your mentees progress carefully.
- Set specific expectations.
Every mentor should establish a good career mentoring relationship by simply discussing the expectations they have of the mentee and also what the mentee expects of them.
