Why Mentorship is Important for Your Career
The concept of mentorship can mean many things to many people. For example, you ask ten different business professionals what mentorship means to them; you will probably get ten other answers. However, in doing so, you will also most likely receive a few similar themes that originate from their solutions. But in general, mentorship is having someone who acts as an advisor to a less experienced individual, known as their mentee. Typically, individuals seek mentors who work in their same or desired field. The mentor helps this individual grow and develop as a professional, often offering advice based on their more advanced knowledge or experience.
Mentorship can be a significant part of your overall career success, both early on in your career and even late in your professional life. A strong and trusted mentor is someone who can provide you with a solid baseline of career support, someone who will keep you grounded, and someone who will help you remain self-aware throughout your entire career journey. As you think about finding a career mentor for yourself, here are a few of those themes to keep in mind to ensure your mentorship relationship is a valuable and sustaining one.
Why do you need a mentor? As business professionals, contrary to popular belief, you do not always have the answers to every possible challenge that is thrown our way in our day jobs. That is why you have mentors to help us guide us through some of our challenging days at work. Mentors can help guide you through situations such as problems with coworkers, potential career-growth opportunities that you could get. They can also help you improve upon your soft skills (communication, networking, decision making), offer up ideas around strategy, and often provide advice around career progression.
A mentor is someone who will keep you grounded in your professional journey and provide direction that you may not be getting from your supervisor or other coworkers. To improve upon certain skills in our lives, a mentor acts as a career coach and our career champion towards our success. A mentor essentially fills those gaps that are missing from your career and professional development growth.
But then the next question will be, where do you find your mentor? Some people prefer that a mentor is someone who has the same profession as you or is closely aligned with what you do. Whether that is an industry of function, you want to identify someone you can relate to in your professional life, someone who has a perspective of the daily trials and tribulations that you encounter and can offer advice or insight that is an appropriately aligned career.
Your mentor can also come from different stages within their career. While it is highly encouraged to seek out someone more senior to you in experience and leadership, don’t hesitate to consider a mentor that could be your peer, one that you could potentially relate to better than someone who may be senior to you. No matter what level of career experience, leadership, or management they may have, the most important factor of your mentor is that it is someone you look up to at any stage of their career.
One of the programs that you could try is our very own Baik Ambassador Group (BAP). The Baik Ambassador Program is a coaching program that focuses on career development and personal growth, which will be very beneficial for students, fresh graduates, and job-seekers alike face working life. This program will guide its members in determining their career paths,
searching for a job, upgrading their application documents, equipping them with the necessary skills in getting accepted, and even connecting them with professionals and networks of their desired industry and position.
The BAP members will receive the opportunity to be personally mentored and connect with our highly experienced coach, who will provide actionable ways to get ahead in their career and answer any of their inquiries.
This program also provides its members with assignments to directly implement what they have gained in our sessions. Through BAP, we seek to create a mutually supportive and encouraging environment where BAP members are free to express their opinions based on their experiences, exchange stories, and give feedback to one another. The duration of this program are two months, through sessions conducted every week with a total of 8-12 courses and topics.
If you would like to boost your career by having the right mentorship program, register yourself for BAP via https://www.baikgroup.com/register and achieve a better opportunity in your career life!
If you would like to know more about career insights, you could also visit our blog and follow us on Instagram @baikgp @ayureadypodcast for more information and extra insights!