Networking, Mentoring, and Shadowing

To ensure that you have a smooth start to, and progress through, your career, there are three essential processes that you can follow. These are mentoring, shadowing, and networking. Mentoring involves a one-to-one relationship between you and a professional who can give you timely advice, motivation, and direction. Shadowing involves going to the workplace with a professional attitude and observing what they do. This allows you to discover more about the career you intend to pursue by watching what actually takes place in a normal workday. Lastly, networking involves building professional links with other people within, and outside, your line of work. Networking helps you get information, guidance, and support from others when it comes to developing your career, or switching from one career to another. This chapter will discuss the importance...

Mentoring

Mentorship is important both in your education and career. There is always the excitement of getting things done all by yourself so that you can attribute all the success to yourself. Getting a job all by yourself is a significant achievement. Planning your career development all by yourself is also a significant achievement, or so it seems. However, the reality is quite different from expectations. You might have the best of ideas, but not actually know how to execute them. Your plan for growing in your career might not exactly fall into place in real life. Your expectations of getting a job by merely spending hours on job boards, applying for positions that you are qualified for, might not go as you expected. This is why you need a mentor to give you guidance and, also, to monitor the steps that you take. Mentoring is a one-to-one relationship where you seek the continued...

Networking

Networking is the building of relationships that help you get information, guidance, and support in your career. Networking has proven benefits of helping one advance more quickly in your career, get better compensation for your skills, develop career mobility, and get more satisfaction from your work life. Networking can be said to be social capital. The more people that you have in your network, the more social capital you have. This capital can be used to get information, opportunities, exposure, more networks, and long-term support in your career. With social capital, you can also advance and develop your career more quickly. An effective network must be built with certain considerations to ensure that you derive maximum social capital from it. The two most important considerations are network size and composition. Network size involves the number of contacts that...

Shadowing

When starting your career straight from campus, you can opt not to wait till you are on-boarded in an organization, and, instead, follow shadowing. Shadowing is, however, not limited to those joining the workforce. Those that have established careers can do it, probably to learn more about an organization or to get insights about a career they want to switch to. Job shadowing allows those who are already in their careers to test whether another career choice would be ideal for them before they make a bold move to switch careers. Shadowing is a career development process where one accompanies a professional to the workplace and observes what their job entails.

For job seekers that are new in the market and have not joined the workforce, shadowing allows them to learn more about prospective companies to join. There is a lot that can be learned about companies just through...

Summary

This chapter has looked at three important processes in career growth and development. Mentoring has been exhaustively discussed as a relationship between one person and a professional who has lengthy experience in an industry and who can give career growth and development guidance. The chapter has looked at the reasons why a mentor is important in one's life. Some of the listed reasons include mentors being sources of knowledge, giving insights on how to improve, giving encouragement, instilling discipline in your life, giving opinions, and giving advice. The chapter has also looked at the best ways of choosing a mentor and has highlighted that you should look at compatibility, strengths and weaknesses, contrast, expertise, and trust.

Networking has also been covered as a method of building relationships that help you to get information, guidance, and support. It...

Further reading

The following are resources that can be used to gain more knowledge on this chapter:

1. https://career.oregonstate.edu/students/networking
2. https://www.elmhurst.edu/academics/career-education/mentoring-and-shadowing/
3. https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/10-reasons-why-a-mentor-is-a-must.html
4. https://www.td.org/insights/understanding-the-value-of-networking-for-job-and-career-development
5. https://www.topresume.com/career-advice/importance-of-networking-for-career-success
6. https://www.summitsearchgroup.com/why-having-a-mentor-is-so-important-for-your-career/
7. https://www.unl.edu/mentoring/why-mentoring-important
8. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-job-shadowing-2062024
9. https://www.livecareer.com/career/advice/jobs/job-shadowing
10. https://www.businessinsider.com/7-career-benefits-of-a-strong-network-2013-2?IR=T
11. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/job-shadowing-is-effective...