The Importance of a Career Mentor

Do you want to find a career mentor? Just look around you. Who are the people you admire and want to emulate? Watch what they do, and do the same. Mentoring can be a powerful tool in your long term career success anywhere, particularly in a highly networked city like Saint Louis. But in order to have an effective mentoring relationship you need to go out on a limb.  Just as you’re asking of the mentor, by trusting their expertise, applying the tools you learn and actually looking for a good fit in a mentor. Here’s some tips to that can help guide your experience.

Mentoring doesn’t work unless you are willing to be mentored.
If you want to have a strong mentoring relationship, all you have to do is ask. Go to the people you admire and tell them you admire their judgment and would like to learn from them. Ask if you can impose on their time to get answers to questions you have.  Take notes, set up meetings, engage them and network alongside of them. The key to a great mentoring partnership is the willingness to learn. If you’re asking a boss or manager to mentor you but you don’t respect them as a leader and someone of strong positive expertise, than the partnership is not going to yield the results you are looking for. Be honest with yourself as to who you want to mentor you and how you want it to look.

Set goals.
Once you’ve established who your mentor(s) will be, you need to make sure that you and he/she are aligned in the mentoring approach. You want a mentor who will help you set career goals, and then take steps to help you realize those goals. In the finance and accounting industry, serving on boards and committees is very important. Talk to your mentor about professional organizations that can help you expand your knowledge in the industry or gain understanding about clients your company serves. A positive mentor will introduce you to organizations and committees that you were not privy to before and help you learn to network within these organizations. Striking a balance in goal setting is the key to a positive mentoring partnership.

It’s personal and professional.
Mentoring can help you feel more confident and self-supporting. A positive mentoring relationship can develop a clearer sense of what you want from your career and, surprisingly, your personal life too.  A positive mentor will help you develop a greater sense of self-awareness and expand your mind to gain understanding about the world from another’s perspective.

Learn what not to do.
Just as a great mentor can help you advance your career, a bad mentor can still produce positive results, if you learn from them the right way. If you are having a bad mentoring experience, use it as a tool to learn what not to do to build self esteem, give performance feedback and how to treat people with respect and dignity. Take advantage of a bad mentoring experience by really looking at what hasn’t been working for them. How are other’s responding to their approach? What kind of feedback do you see taking place? How long has it been since they were last promoted or moved up in the company? Take notes of what not to do, and then do the opposite. You can learn just as much from a bad experience if you turn it into a positive one.

You have the power to create a positive mentoring experience. Accounting Career Consultants has the network and contacts you need to create that positive experience in your career. Contact our team of experienced recruiters in St Louis today for more information!