Mentoring can be highly rewarding for both mentor and mentee and can last far longer than the short stay you and your intern have. It can enable you to build and establish new relationships and to use your skills and experience to inspire and help others. It can also enhance your leadership skills to ultimately become a better team member and manager within the media industry.
One of the most important things to do as a mentor and industry insider, is that you provide advice, continue to deliver support and always keep your mentee’s best interests in mind.
Looking to find out some steps you can take to be a great mentor for your PressPad guest? We have gathered some steps for you here:
Identify professional goals
A great PressPad mentor helps a mentee identify their professional goals and to understand what they wish to gain out of their internship. Sitdown with your mentee and establish both their short and long-term goals and skills they wish to obtain during their internship and beyond, and how they can work toward achieving them successfully. This is a great time to also see where you can help, and how your industry experience and skills can benefit your mentee professionally. Don’t worry about being upfront either on what exactly you can help with – in the end you should only be doing what you feel is doable for you. There is no expectation, for example, for you to proofread your mentees work or make big decisions for them. Rather, you are a sounding board to listen and give advice to guide your PressPad guest.
Look at their CV
If you and your mentee agree on reviewing their CV, it is a great way to help them kickstart their career, as you may be able to offer advice and tips on how to enhance and improve areas. You may also have time to help with your mentee’s most recent experience from their internship; and could advise them on how to successfully add this to both their CV and covering letter in an effort to ultimately stand out to employers.
Help them develop good working practices
Developing and maintaining good working practices will enable your PressPad intern to achieve success both in their short and long-term professional careers. It might seem like things you do in your sleep by now, but for the intern staying with you, such practices may be completely new. Helping them establish a routine including the importance of punctuality, time management, and how to develop good communication skills in the workplace could, therefore, be of great benefit. You could also give them advice on how to arrange and continue to network outside of the workplace – such as coffee with colleagues to create long-term relationships with mutual benefits. Again this does not need to be a long or extensive exercise. Talk about your day and routine or maybe things you wish you would have done in hindsight when you were starting out, for example.
When it comes to your meetings and agreed goals, you could also encourage your mentee to keep note of their decision making, for example – a diary of a notebook that can be used for analysis for how and why they have reached a particular resolution. A diary will also help with time-management, and is great for jotting down industry contacts, what they have learnt and keeping a to-do list.
Establish boundaries and arrangements from the outset
When it comes to organising your stay and your mentoring relationship there are some basic requirements to help you both establish boundaries, so both parties are comfortable with the arrangement. This can be achieved through communication with your mentee, such as noting if any areas or food in the communal areas are off limits. Each arrangement is specific to each mentor-mentee relationship; try and have a conversation with them early on so there are no misunderstandings.
These are only suggestions you may not have the time to do everything on this list. Doing one of them right will always be better than over-committing yourself and feeling like you’re letting people down.
