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Having a mentor is essential these days to advance your engineering career. To get an engineering mentor, you must take their advance very seriously, listen to their instruction and apply their teachings. This can take time, but once you establish a relationship based on respect, you will have a limitless resource of free guidance and mentoring.
The following are 5 ways why mentorship in engineering is recommended:
1- Mentors can provide guidance for career growth
Mentors can do a lot for your career as an engineer. They can guide you through the projects you are working on to perform well. The mentor knowledge will shorten the time you need to get to more senior positions as they can offer valuable guidance for career growth.
2- Mentors can expand your network
Mentors are senior engineers with years of knowledge and strong relationships in the industry. Having an accomplished engineer as your mentor can introduce you to like-minded individuals that can open a world of possibilities for you for further work opportunities and opportunities to expand within your company.
3- Mentors can teach you lessons learned from their career
As a junior engineer, in a way, you are still very naive to a lot of things in the industry, which makes you vulnerable to mistakes. But having an engineering mentor can make it easy to avoid those rookie mistakes by learning from their experience and mistakes when they were in your position. This also can accelerate your career to a more senior level.
4- Mentors can give you helpful feedback on your performance
Having a mentor can also give you the feedback you need to improve your skills. A mentor is someone who wants the best for you, so they will more likely be willing to give you more helpful feedback and more keen on seeing you succeed in your career. Therefore, taking their advice seriously and applying their teaching is essential.
5- Mentors can recommend you for senior positions
The final benefit of having a mentor is having someone willing to fight on behalf of you behind closed doors when a new senior position is open, and a promotion is to be given to a junior engineer. This is the passive side of having a mentor, which is a mentor who believes in your ability and says good things about you to the board of directors to get you the promotion you deserve.
How to find a mentor engineer?
Finding a mentor can be difficult because for a senior engineer to be willing to become your mentor, they must see potential in your abilities and be willing to invest their time in your learning.
Having a mentor is not as easy as asking the question to a senior engineer. The mentor needs to be someone you are working closely with. This type of relationship takes time, and for a senior engineer to take you as their protege, you need to do the following:
- Listen to their advice and teachings and take them seriously
- Show improvement in your performance based on their teachings
- Ask them for help when needed
- Offer help when they are busy
- Ask for their feedback and work on yourself
If you apply the above and be patient, you will slowly develop a relationship based on mutual respect and have a mentor willing to invest in you and see you prosper through the years.
More resources:
Besides having a mentor that can help you through your career, you need to work hard on yourself to improve your skills and abilities; the following are a few more resources to help you become the best engineer in your workplace:
