Do you have a mentor?

Mentoring is so valuable, yet mentors are pretty hard to come by and we frequently get asked for support in finding one.

I’m interested to hear from people that have one – how did your paths meet, how frequently do you talk, and what do you find the most valuable aspect of the relationship?

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I don’t have one yet buuuuuuuuuuuuuut if someone wants to be mine… :heart_eyes:

Definitely a valuable thing.

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I have recently started working with a mentor, and it has been a fantastic experience so far!

We met via a non-profit which provides services to immigrants - they have a program which matches newcomers with volunteer mentors to help them adjust to the new working environment. I wasn’t a new immigrant, but I’d recently moved provinces, didn’t know anyone and was changing careers so many of the challenges are similar. Somone suggested the program to me, and I still qualified so I decided to give it a try.

So far, we have met in-person every 2-3 weeks, and there is some email correspondance in between. Since it is part of a formal program it is fairly structured - we created an activity plan together at the beginning and have been working through that (it’s a 3 month program). I think the most valuable aspect is that it has really changed my goals - I’ve been challenged to really think about the specifics of what I want and pursue it, rather than my previous approach of looking for any start I can. I’ve also got a much better sense of the local business culture and how things are done here, and he is introducing me to other local professionals for informational interviews which I have learnt a lot from. I’ve never had a mentor before and I can’t recommend it enough!

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That’s so great to hear. I’m particularly interested in your change in goals. Are you finding that it is narrowing your options at all, or was the ‘any start you can’ approach unnecessary?

I would love to find a mentor here in Los Angeles!! anyone interested???

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Well, he suggested that I think about the type of role (UX research vs UX vs UI), type of company (agency, freelance, in-house), product type (e-commerce, SAAS etc) and industry sector (health, finance, etc.) and look for a niche where skills from my background would be an advantage. Yes, this has considerably shrunk the list of potential options! However, I will have more to offer and shoud be a better fit.

P.S. How am I still a new member? I’ve been around for ages!

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That’s a very valid point, and probably what most people forget.

Fixed.

(I actually think it might be a bug to do with our migration. Will dig deeper.)

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He he - I see I now have my own special status!

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My english is not very good, my apologies for that :slight_smile: i had a mentor and was very helpful to define all about ux and have more knowledge, for work can not be my mentor, It would be nice to have the opportunity to have a mentor to clarify the direction of how to be an ux designer … Someone wants to be my mentor?

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Agreed @HAWK! Having a good mentor can really transform your career. I’ve worked with some fantastic mentors in the past and they’ve helped with everything from opening doors to new opportunities, to giving invaluable advice and being a ‘sounding board’ for new ideas.

The mentors I’ve had in the past have been introduced through a mix of connections, and from personally reaching out, and the ‘format’ has usually been a casual face-to-face catch up every month, with a few emails in between - I’ve found this works really well. Because my personal experience has been with ‘informal’ mentoring relationships (as opposed to working with a mentor via a course, for example) I’ve always been reluctant to give them too much work (like looking at individual pieces of work and giving feedback) and have mostly benefitted from more general career advice, however at CareerFoundry we see our students benefitting hugely from the coupling of practical, specific, exercise-based feedback with general career and job-readiness guidance.

Yes I do.

If you want to become world-class, the fastest route is to get mentored by world-class. I got lucky to get hired by a UX company that was world-class. My mentor recently got poached by Google. Nevertheless, we still keep in touch and work on design exercises.

Did you find your mentor through your job? Was s/he a colleague?

Through my job. I got lucky because I got hired by world-class designers, mostly of them are now at Google.

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Yeah. Google’s changes are awesome))

Though I’ve only been in the business for a little over a year, I’ve taken on the role of mentor for one really awesome guy in my company who’s interested in getting into the UX world. For me, I always feel like there’s so much in the UX field that I don’t know, but this was a great reminder of how much I do know. I love to teach and share my knowledge whenever possible, so it’s been tremendously rewarding.

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They don’t work at Google’s GUI department. They work under Google’s Voice UX department and that goes for me as well. I don’t do any GUI UX. Just voice UX. So basically they help improve Google Home and other devices that are relevant to voice.