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Young professionals often switch roles as they navigate the beginning of their career – until they find the right field of work or area of focus suitable for their long-term career interests. Every industry has associations that host networking events, conferences and often also a formal mentoring program. These programs are an easy way to connect with people with more experience or in a different role. By joining the association and their mentoring program a young professional can make the right connections and gain insights. The process of navigating various career opportunities can be enhanced through mentorship in several ways:
1. Exploring different functions
While working in IT for example, someone may realize they are more interested in marketing and would like to learn more about that career path. They could join an IT industry association mentoring program and through that, connect with a mentor who works in the marketing department of an IT firm to learn how it works and explore potential opportunities. This is a safe way to connect with someone who can help at a similar company.
2. Exploring entrepreneurship
They may want to start a business but not know much about how that works. A mentor with startup experience can clarify how a business works – from registration to marketing, sales, operations, taxes and more.
Entrepreneur mentoring programs can be found at university-linked startup accelerators, government-funded employment agencies and municipal Small Business Enterprise (SMEs) offices.
For example, a young professional was thinking about starting a business but once they realized the financial risks involved they discovered intrapreneurship instead – the opportunity to start a project at their employer’s company. That way they could experience the process of starting and building a project, building a team and delivering results – while using the company’s budget rather than risking their own livelihood. The project is owned by the company, but they gained valuable experience that could later translate into starting their own business.
3. Sales mentoring – getting the client’s perspective
An entrepreneur may be starting out and working to improve their sales approach. This is when a mentor who is in the buyer’s position can help explain how they see things from the client’s perspective.
Joining the mentoring program of the buyer’s industry association can help here. For example, if you are selling a product to hotels, joining the hotel association will help connect with potential buyers.
For example, a small digital agency had difficulty selling websites to large clients and wondered how they could improve their process to better compete for projects. By joining a marketing association’s mentoring program, they connected with a mentor who was an executive at a large corporation and got feedback on their presentation, marketing materials, website content and more. This helped them refine their collateral and get better results. But the most important feedback was that agencies selling websites often provide printed materials with links to case studies that don’t work or even exist online anymore. By providing many links to live working examples, a small agency can stand out in the crowd. This unexpected insight could only be gained from speaking with a potential buyer about their experience working with agencies.
4. In search of startup funding
Startup funding is another topic that can be difficult to navigate. For this it helps to connect with someone who has already been there and done that. They can be found through mentoring at the angel investor networks, venture capital associations and government small business investment programs.
An entrepreneur was exploring the potential of raising investment capital and learning about how that works. Beyond the available content online and in books, meeting a successful entrepreneur who raised multiple investments provided much needed advice and ideas they never thought about.
These ranged from the fact that specific types of lawyers and accountants are more prone to be angel investors and when a company is ready for institutional investors, asset management companies offer unique opportunities to get started.
Another direction was government grants, academic collaborations and business competitions. After learning about the various options the entrepreneur decided to focus on specific potential grants as they don’t dilute equity.
Mentoring programs offer a unique opportunity to learn directly from people who have done what you want to do, gain insights from their years of experience and get quick answers to your questions. Candid conversations about challenges can uncover opportunities that would never be explored otherwise.
