How to Choose the Perfect Mentor for Job Readiness

Are you ready to step up your game and conquer the interview battlefield?

In today's fiercely competitive job market, where the stakes are high and opportunities are scarce, mere skills won't guarantee success.

It's time to unlock the secrets of job readiness and enlist the guidance of a skilled career coach.

Together, we'll embark on a transformative journey to master the art of presentation and communication.🤝

And equip you with the winning edge you need to shine above the rest.

In this blog, I'll share some important tips to help you pick a mentor to accelerate your job search endeavours and skyrocket your career.🚀

Role of a Mentor in Accelerated Career Growth

Preparing for job readiness these days has become a highly challenging and complicated affair.

This is where a mentor comes into the picture.

A mentor’s imporatance lies in letting a candidate polish their existing skills and abilities.

A mentor is someone who constantly motivates you to explore and investigate new opportunities for learning and discovery.

Additionally, they help you deal with situations like adapting to a new workplace and taking up stretch assignments.

Developing a firm and steadfast mentor relationship allows you to actively work upon your strengths and weaknesses.

⭐It infuses you with the requisite perspective to excel in all your recruitment tests and interviews.

Besides this, coming up with a correct interview preparation strategy is something most candidates struggle with.

Although this is one of the major reasons for failure in interviews, it is one of the most ignored aspect.  

Here's where, having a mentor helps immensely.

One of the key duties of a mentor is to present candidates with a roadmap to effectively navigate through the interview preparation journey.

These are just a few points on how having a mentor can give you an upper-hand in your interview preparation.

Things to Know Before You Try to Pick a Mentor

There are certain key points that you need to understand before even thinking about getting a mentor.

Understanding these points will help you get an idea of how the mentoring market works today.

1. Mentoring comes in all forms - Pick the right one

While it is not unusual to have a peer as your mentor, mentors ususally are at least a year or two senior to you in a professional capacity.

Although most people visualize mentorship as a long-term and one-to-one relationship, it necessarily need not be that way always.

👉There are various mentoring modes out there, like personal mentoring, group mentoring, and peer mentoring.

One-on-one mentoring sessions are traditionally more intimate and insightful than the other mentoring models. 👉Additionally, mentoring can also take place in the form of bite-sized segments.

This usually happens when you happen to come across someone who possesses a specific skill that you want to acquire

And you then subsequently proceed to discuss the same with them via a one-off mentoring session.

2. Understand the types of Mentor Collaborations

• Free collaborations

There are many industry experts out there who believe in mentoring rookies and new learners out there at no cost.

However, they are indeed rare.

Most expert professionals are unwilling to invest their valuable time and resources in a candidate for free.

👉Mentorship is a dedicated line of service, and candidates willing to opt for proper mentorship should be mentally prepared about the financial aspect.

• Paid collaborations

This is the most preferred and ethical way of mentorship collaboration.

⭐An experienced mentor is spending quality time in your growth and it is completely fair for him/her to expect something in return.

Even as someone looking for a mentor, you should go out with an open mind and be ready to pay a fee.

Most beneficial collaborations are the once which are beneficial for all the involved parties.

⭐Free programs look nice and tempting but they generally don't last more than a few sessions as there is no commitment.

Also, the interest and commitment of the mentors goes down quickly as they are not getting great returns out of their investment.

If you truly want to get the best out of a 1:1 mentorship, definitely go for a paid collaboration.

3. Have Clarity Regarding Your Goals

Even before you go about searching for a mentor you must have a clear idea about your goals.

Before getting yourself into a mentoring relationship, you should have an idea regarding what you hope to extract out of it.

"Not creating clear preparation goals is like working against yourself. There is no way to analyse if you're on a right track - a sign of potential failure." - Sahil Maniar, CEO, Preplaced

⭐Always bear in mind that a mentoring relationship’s objective is to enable you to resolve  challenges and focus on your weaknesses.

You can only do so when you are clear about your reason behind looking for a mentor in the first place.

Thus, develop a clear understanding of the lapses that exist in your performance.

What if You're Not 100% Sure?

Many a times, you might not even be sure about your weaknesses, goals and even what help you require.

It happens and there is completely no problem in being not sure about it.

You might even know how a mentor can help you out.

In such scenarios, there are multiple options that you can explore.

🎯Have a goal setting session with a mentor to help you come up with a preparation plan, career strategy and SMART goals.

It is very important to create your goals before starting, otherwise things can quickly go out of control.

You might end up spending a lot of time, effort and money with no concrete results.‍

🎯You can even have a discussion session with a mentors to understand how they can help you with preparation & career growth.

How to choose a mentor for professional development and career readiness

It is an easy task to showcase the significance of having a mentor.

Finding the perfect mentor, however, is not as straightforward as it might seem.

Not only should the mentor’s thoughts and beliefs align with yours, but their industry and professional expertise must be relevant enough.

The world is full of bright and intelligent people.

However, not all of them are equipped enough to helm a position of mentorship.

🎯Thus, the onus of settling upon a mentor that perfectly complements your profile rests exclusively with you.

Once you have a clear idea about the skills you want to develop and the areas you want to address, you can begin scouting for individuals you feel are best suited to act as your mentor.

Here are some ways you can find a mentor:

1. Reach out to Mentors on LinkedIn

As the world’s largest network of professionals out there, Linkedin presents with you a host of mentoring options to choose from.

You can search for individuals and business professionals who belong to your domain and get in touch with them.

With Linkedin, you also get the benefit of scanning through the complete professional profile of the individual you have in mind before approaching them.

⭐This subsequently helps you determine whether the person in choice can be the perfect mentor for you or not.

Read: How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out: With Examples

2. Contact topic experts on Quora/Reddit/YouTube

The rise of the internet as a globally accessible commodity has resulted in a spate of positive developments in the professional world.

It has allowed industry veterans and other topic experts to share their experience via platforms like Quora, Reddit, and YouTube.

This also allows you to reach out to these people directly and seek their help for job readiness.

Be Particular about your Requirements while reaching out

🎯While reaching out to a mentor, you must present them with a clear picture of your profile.

🎯Be specific about what you want right from the very beginning.

🎯Let your mentor understand why you chose them over someone else and the exact areas you wish to address with them as your career guide.

🎯Maintaining a transparent and open channel of dialogue with your mentor at all times.

3. Use Professional Mentoring Platforms

We all know that reaching out to people for help is hard.

Messaging strangers, getting rejections and wasting time & effort is not everyone's cup of tea.

That's where most people prefer taking help from premium mentoring platforms and cut the hassle of finding a mentor with a little extra cost to pay.

The choicest 1:1 mentorship is out there consider your existing strengths and weaknesses.

⭐These platforms are invaluable for allowing you to get directly in touch with the right mentor.

Here are some of the famous mentoring platforms for interview preparation that you can try out:

1. Preplaced
2. Exponent
3. MentorCruise

Going about searching for a mentor without any direction in mind is an exercise in futility.

This is where career mentorship platforms come to the rescue.

⭐These sites take your profile into account to fix you up with the most qualified and experienced mentors out there.

These platforms scan through your profile to determine your strengths and weaknesses and accordingly allot you a mentor who is best suited for your profile.

The platform itself carries out the entire work of finding and choosing the mentors.

⭐All you have to do to cut your research short is search a mentor of your choice.  

Invariably, your mentor will be someone who would be based out of the same industry as you are or someone who’s working in a role to which you want to switch to.

This puts them where they can guide you effectively regarding all the steps to smoothen up the transition process.

Read: Is It Worth Having a Career Mentor: 5 Things You Must Kno

How a mentor is assigned at Preplaced

A rigorous pipeline is followed to find a perfect mentor for each of the candidates.

To personalise the process and assign the best possible mentor, a personal assistant is provided to each candidate.

Below are the high level steps followed:

Step 1: Understanding candidate's requirements and goals

Once the registration process is completed, one of our experts will get in touch with you to understand more about your goals.

⭐Your requirements, background, and work experience play a crucial role in assigning the mentor.

Step 2: Finding a suitable mentor

We choose a mentor that would perfectly suit your needs.

‍Dream company, years of experience, area of interest, and job role are the factors that are taken into account.

⭐Our large mentor community helps us to make sure that you get a mentor based on the role and company of your choice.

Unlike other companies, we use a manual process for this step as it ensures a perfect match between candidate and the mentor.

Step 3: Finalising the mentor

Once a suitable mentor is selected, we share the complete profile of the mentor.

We believe that knowing your mentor is of utmost importance.

⭐It inculcates trust and belief about the guidance, you are about to receive.

You can go through the profile, achievements, and journey of the mentor and even opt for a different mentor(or a mentor from a specific company if you wish.

Want to try personalised mentorship for yourself? Try a free 1:1 mentorship session with a career mentor.

Conclusion

Aiming for accelerated career growth and job readiness is always a challenging and nerve-wracking affair.

One needs to have the proper guidance and skills at their disposal to crack the interviews and thrive at their dream jobs.

Finding this guidance, however, is more complicated than what meets the eye.

⭐This is where mentor-guided growth come into the picture.

Platforms like Preplaced help experince a personalised mentorship experience that is tailored to YOUR career path.

Try a free 1:1 mentorship session with an expert in your field.

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Read:

Effective Time Management: Balance Work and Mentorship

5 Stages of Career Development: Where You Are + How to Grow