What’s the Right Way to Find a Mentor?

Finding a Mentor is an important step for many people in their career development but finding the right Mentor can be challenging. Naturally, here at Career Navig8r, we feel that we’ve built the perfect environment to find a Mentor who’ll be productive and helpful for their Mentees to work with.

Today we’d like to explain why we feel that Career Navig8r is the right way to find a Mentor and how our Mentors can make a huge difference in their Mentee’s professional lives.

What Does a Mentor Do?

Many people have their own idea of what a Mentor is or should be, but here at Career Navig8r, we like to keep things simple. To us a Mentor – or a Navig8r as we like to call them – is someone who can guide you. They’re someone who can answer your questions but they’re also someone who’ll push you to ask the right questions in the first place.

That’s why we believe that a career Mentor should be someone with experience in the role their Mentee is looking for help with. Whether the Mentor is helping them to achieve the job role in the first place or they’re bringing their years of experience on board to help the Mentee broaden their skills and improve their results, the important part is that a Mentor has first-hand experience.

How To Find a Mentor

Finding a Mentor is easy. Just use Career Navig8r!

All jokes aside, there’s a reason why we decided to build our site around job roles. When you look for a Mentor on Career Navig8r you’re searching for someone whose experience will help you in your goals. First and foremost, this means having/having had the correct job role but there can be more to it.

Perhaps you’re interested in more than just the role, but the whole career path. In that case you might want to look for someone who’s held the role you’re looking for and has gone on to hold more prestigious positions in the same field/industry. They’ll be perfectly positioned to mentor you for years to come and help you make better long-term decisions.

How to Build a Mentoring Relationship

So you’ve found your Mentor. Hurray!

Seriously, you’ve taken a huge step towards your future career by locating someone who can really coach you and show you what you need to do to get where you’ve always dreamed of.

That being said, finding a Mentor is just the start. Presuming you’ve found someone who’s a good fit for you, then the two of you will want to start by establishing the basics – where do you plan to be in five years? In ten years? What are your Mentor’s strengths and how can they help you?

Don’t be afraid to ask questions of your Mentor about their approach to Mentoring and what, specifically, they can do for you. A good mentoring relationship, like any relationship, has to be built on a foundation of trust and that means clear and honest communication from the start.

Furthermore, don’t feel you have to work with the first Mentor you find. Finding a Mentor can be a process and you may wish to interview several candidates before deciding on the person you want to work with. After all, the intention here is to build a long and prosperous professional relationship, so it’s okay to shop around until you find someone who’s a good match for your personality.

And it doesn’t have to stop with just one Mentor. While we encourage long-term Mentor/Mentee relationships, Mentees are always at their liberty to find new Mentors as they progress through their career, taking on new roles and facing different challenges.

When The Mentee Becomes The Mentor

At the end of the day, the right way to find a Mentor is to follow the process that works. Here at Career Navig8r, our approach encourages concrete goals and excellent progression for Mentees. Furthermore we encourage all our Mentees to aspire towards mentoring if that’s something that appeals to them.

After all, what better way to train someone to become an excellent Mentor than by experiencing an excellent mentoring relationship first-hand. Even better, you only need to be one step ahead of your Mentee along your career path in order to be their Mentor. In practice this means that mentoring relationships can be long and lucrative.

At Career Navig8r, we encourage everyone to have the best of both worlds – building an excellent career with help from a seasoned professional, whilst also earning good money on the side as a Mentor themselves. It’s the ultimate win-win situation and everyone can benefit.

Are you ready to leap into the wonderful world of mentoring? Sign up today at Career Navig8r and begin the next stage of your professional life!