5 Reasons to Shape Your Career Path with a Mentor

When you’re first setting out on your career journey, there are a lot of daunting decisions to be made. After all, even if you know the job you’re aiming to one day work, you’ll still have to choose a career path and that could prove challenging. With so many potential routes to the same end-goal and so many obstacles along the way, it can feel really difficult to try and decide which path you want to pursue.

What you need is an expert. Someone who knows the job you’re one day hoping to work and can give you the benefit of their experience in deciding what’s right for you. In other words, a Mentor.

1. Personalised Guidance 

In many ways, a Mentor’s first-hand experience is the most important part of what they can provide but there’s more to it than just that. The real benefit of a Mentor is not just that they have the experience but that they can apply all that knowledge directly to your situation.

When you work closely with people, you always get to know them a little better and as you work with your Mentor, they’ll learn more about your professional strengths and weaknesses. From there they’ll be able to help you build the skills you’ll need when tackling obstacles while also helping you to choose a path that’s best suited to your personal aptitudes.

2. Skill Development

The value of skills changes over time just as industries change. When you choose a career, it’s hard to get that insider perspective on which skills the people at the top are really looking for. Hard, that is, unless you have a Mentor.

Your Mentor can encourage you to develop the skills that are most-sought after for the job role you’re looking for. Not only that but they can also help you take a more holistic approach to your skillset, giving you both a breadth and depth of knowledge.

3. Gaining Confidence and Clarity

It takes a lot of confidence to choose a career and see it through according to plan. You need to believe in yourself and where you’re going. You need to have faith that the path you’re on is the correct one.

That all sounds great in theory but in practice a career can take years to develop and faith is a hard thing to maintain over a long period of time. So how do you sustain that faith while working towards your ultimate dream job?

A Mentor is more than just a teacher. They’re a guide and, when necessary, they’re a cheerleader. A good Mentor can help put your achievements into perspective and show you that, no matter how difficult things might get, your end goal is still within grasp. After all, they’ve done it so you can too!

4. Learning from Real-World Experiences

Do you ever have the urge to speak to your younger self? Do you ever wish you could turn around and tell them what they were doing wrong and which pitfalls they could avoid if they only knew what you do now?

This is how it feels to be a Mentor and it’s that feeling that will motivate your Mentor to share some of their most important life lessons with you.

Sometimes those lessons may be very subject specific, detailing better methods for solving problems in the real world. At other times they’ll be more general advice such as how to build and sustain a network, the correct way to negotiate a pay rise/promotion or the finer points of job interview etiquette.

The key here is that your Mentor can teach you the kind of lessons that, otherwise, you could only learn through first hand experience, helping you to build a stronger career from the start. By standing on the shoulders of giants, you’ll reach heights you might never have thought possible.

5. Crafting a Strategic Career Plan

If you want to have a truly successful career then it always helps to have a plan right from the start. While you can take your career step by step – and many do, in fact, do just this – having a well-thought-out plan will give you a serious advantage.

Instead of developing a wide range of skills that may not prove as useful as you hope down the line, you can specialise in specific skills, becoming a true master. Instead of moving in the general direction of your dream job, you can take a more direct route without having to spend as much time working in areas you’re less passionate about.

All that being said, crafting a career plan is not easy. It requires a detailed knowledge of the industry you’re working in and the ability to predict which skills will be most useful for the job you dream of. With a Mentor, that job becomes so much easier. They’re the perfect person to sit you down and help you map out your path in advance. Furthermore, if you ever get lost along the way, they’ll be able to help show you how to get back on track.

Are you looking for a Mentor to help you find that dream job role? Or do you think you’ve got what it takes to become a Mentor yourself? Sign up for free with Career Navig8r today and choose a career that’s right for you!