Pick any book on career development and you will learn that mentorship is crucial to a successful career, particularly for women. As a fresh graduate though, it can be a challenge to ascertain how to find a mentor and what qualities to look for in one. In this post, I would like address the first predicament.
Who is a career mentor?
Essentially a mentor is someone who has “been there, done that” in a loose sense of the phrase. You can read more about the mentoring relationship and the benefits of mentorship here.
Where to look for mentors?
Cliche but you just have to look around.
You can seek career advice from anyone in your network. Think classmates, professors, managers, colleagues, parents, friends of your parents, cousins, alumni from your schools, friends, people you have met at career fairs and industry conferences, and the random person you connected with on LinkedIn based on similar interests.
If your request for advice and / or connection is clear, reasonable, and polite, most people will engage with you. Depending on how that first interaction goes and the effort you put into keeping the relationship going, you or may not form a mentor-mentee dynamic.
How did I find my mentors?
Over the years, I have had several mentors and still do. More recently, three of those relationships have become stronger than others as I have settled into the financial services industry within Amsterdam. While my mentors too benefit in small ways from their relationship with me, I will focus this post solely on my side of the experience of finding these mentors and benefitting from their guidance.
1. Office neighbor
When I started at an insurance company in a compliance and internal controls role, my manager and most of the team were based in the UK. So to settle into the Amsterdam office, I often turned to the person who sat next to me, a friendly face from a different team–let us call her P.
P, I quickly figured, was well-connected and respected for her work at the company. Additionally, she was an insurance veteran, whereas I still had a lot to learn about how the insurance business works.
Over the two and a half years I worked at this company, P was my guiding compass not only for technical insurance bits, but also for navigating stakeholder management at the senior leadership level for my compliance audits.
When I was being recruited for my current consulting job, P acted as my sounding board for both how the new role fits my career trajectory and how I should approach offer negotiations. Her advice and support were invaluable.
While previously she was my mentor in the role of a senior colleague, ever since leaving the firm our relationship has evolved into a friend-mentor. Now she is able to bring an outside perspective to my career predicaments, which is very useful.
2. Director at a client
I met the director, let us call her B, on my first day at a banking client which was also my first day ever in consulting. She told me straight up about a regulatory report deadline in two months that I was responsible for delivering on her behalf.
Those two months were insane; I was finding my way at the consulting company I had just joined, navigating stakeholders relevant to my regulatory report at the client (there were a lot of them), and also writing the report itself (80+ pages).
Through the successful delivery of the final report in an incredibly tight timeframe (usually this report takes a year to complete), I gained B’s trust and mentorship. Even though she is no longer my client, I see her regularly for lunch or coffee and share my work experiences and career developments for her insights. Considering her experience and connections at major banks and regulators in the Netherlands, she is also able to share with me great market insight into current trends.
My relationship with B too grew organically because the two of us worked long hours on this report for two months. However, I did ask B before leaving the client if I could turn to her for career mentorship and she said she would “love that.”
3. Partner who interviewed me
Generally the final interview at consulting firms is done by a Partner. The one who interviewed me–for post’s sake, A–and I developed a good relationship during my interview and offer negotiations.
Because all my previous communication with her had been so pleasant, one month into my consulting job I scheduled a coffee catch-up with A. The coffee again went quite well as I filled her in on my experience at the firm so far and where I see myself within the team. At the end of our meeting, I casually asked if she would be up for a monthly coffee.
A said yes and now we regularly speak about both my achievements at clients and career aspirations within our firm. While my relationship with her is not as informal as the one with P or B, chats with her have been very useful in my transition to the consulting world.
She has also helped me expand my internal network considering she has been at the firm for over 25 years. Due to her vast experience, A also is a strong sounding board for my ideas to gain market share or kickstart an internal initiative.
I hope these snippets about how I have found three of my (honestly) several mentors help you identify people in your life that can act as trustworthy and meaningful mentors to you. If you have any questions, do let me know.
SHOP THE POST
