Fast Company | Business + Innovation: Myriad blogs and self-help books tout the benefits of having a mentor: that person that helps guide you up your career beanstalk. But finding a mentor can often seem elusive. Perhaps that’s because looking for a single person to lead you through your career isn’t the right approach.
4 comments:
Using several mentor instead of one is a perspective I never looked at before. Whether it be the current connotation of the word mentor or the way I interpreted it, to me mentor meant one person. But several mentors makes much more sense, seeing how nobody knows the best ways to handle everything. While I do agree with the multiple mentors I think cold emailing might not be the best method of search. If I received emails with those headlines, even if one of them applied to me think I would delete it out of fear of malware or irritation of spam. Plus to send an email you need email addresses, which if you are exploring something new you most likely would have no contacts for that field.
This is a pretty interesting perspective-- the idea that maybe the reason why you haven't found that "one mentor" was because you can totally have more than just one! I've had several very, very dear mentors throughout my life so far (of which I still keep in touch with today and see whenever I go back to New York) that have helped me get to where I am today. The cold email approach however, if definitely a ballsy move. That's something that I've been struggling with recently in light of the coming up internship search. I feel like sending a cold email is a skill that is important, and should be something that is slightly intimidating! Who wouldn't be intimidated or in awe of someone well-off in their field which you want to one day enter? And I'm sure no one wants to be labeled as a creep, either. I'm still in process of rehauling my website and resume letters, but I've got my list of people to contact written down and it really is a little bit spooky looking at the list. But I feel like the worst that could happen, is that they don't have time or can't get back to you. Keeping in mind that the worse thing someone could do is never reply gives me more hope in sending cold emails! Nothing to fear but fear itself!
I usually spend a good deal of time mocking these types of articles, but this points to a couple interesting facts about people and mentorship. 1. Almost everyone is interested in helping young people in their industry succeed at their jobs. This means that cold emailing someone will often result in a follow-up email and the potential for mentorship or at least an interview. 2. I would have never thought about seeking mentors who were 2-3 years older than me as a mentor. It does make sense that those people have made the career transition and had those positions for a short enough period of time that they remember how they got there, and you can benefit from that experience. I also think it might help if your mentor is closer to age in you because they will likely understand your position in the world and how it relates to the current political and economic climate. I do not think that you should limit your mentors based on age though. In fact, I think this thinking will help you broaden your base of potential mentors over time.
To me the most interesting/useful part of this article was the last section about who to look to for advice. It feels like the pervasive traditional wisdom on this topic is that the longer someone has been in a particular industry the better a resource they are for all your mentoring needs. This may well be true for some things, but this article makes a good point about how for many questions a person who has been through it recently may be a better resource. Sure someone who’s been working in their field for years may be able to give good general advice or even better solutions to a particular problem you have. But if I was just starting out I would want to talk to someone who was where I was currently more recently. Not only are they more likely to have current advice as the article points out but there would be less of a power and age divide which would make it more comfortable to ask questions.
Post a Comment