7 steps to get you a career mentor
A step-by-step guide to help you find your perfect mentor and build the career you want.
Everyone could benefit from a mentor. Someone who can guide you in the right direction, a sounding board you can bounce ideas off, a pressureless career-support relationship based on trust and respect, that one person you can go to in a crisis who can help you see things rationally. My business partner and I have had plenty of mentors in the past — the good ones have helped propel us forward at a pace that we wouldn’t have reached alone and the bad ones have taught us lessons on trusting our own instincts and understanding that the right mentor at the right time is more important than simply just having a mentor.
Often the thing that holds people back when thinking about getting a mentor is the actionable process that goes into finding someone who can help. How do you know who is going to be a good mentor? How do you find them? How do you ask them? What if they say no? Will I become a nuisance to them? But the reality is, we know loads of people who have found incredible mentors by just col-emailing them. Which is what we’re going to do now. In this article, I’ll show you how to go from sitting at home thinking about what mentorship looks like through to securing that actual face-to-face conversation with your dream mentor.
Let’s go.
STEP 1: What do you need a mentor for?
This is very important. You need to really think about why you need a mentor and exactly what it is that they’ll be adding to your life. So, what’s the area you need specific, ongoing guidance with? Is it contacts and networking in the industry, is it making sales, is it strategy, is it that you’d simply like to be in touch with someone who you see as an older version of you for confidence advice, are you looking for a hype person…
a mentor is someone who can help you with an area you feel you’re lacking and if you do want help with more than one thing, it’s possible to find someone who can help you with all of them, or it’s possible to have multiple mentors. You don’t have to limit yourself, but you do have to realise early on that it’s unlikely one person probably can help with absolutely everything.
ACTION: Make a spreadsheet. Pinpoint what the mentorship will focus on and make a list of key questions you’d like answered under that focus. This can be as many questions as you like and as broad as you want.
STEP 2: What makes a good mentor?
They’re everywhere. Everyone wants to be a mentor. You see, people are narcissists and being able to say you mentor someone is a huge ego stroke. It’s easy to find someone who’s willing to mentor you — the issue is in finding someone who is a) genuinely helpful and b) has the right assets you need.
For narrowing down your target mentor, you can turn to Google. Visualise your dream mentor and what qualifications / level they would be at. In most cases, you want someone who is in some way linked to your industry or the business you’d like to go into and is clearly good at what they do. So for example, you might want someone who is C-level at an award-winning company or is an active innovator in the industry (side note: an innovator means they’ll be more open to mentoring new talent).
ACTION: Make a list of the following on your spreadsheet:
- A list of dream companies you’d like a mentor to work in/have worked in
- A list of dream job titles they’ve had/departments they have been in
- Some goals they have achieved (e.g. awards)/projects they have been part of (e.g. product launches)/areas of change they are interested and active in (e.g. equality in the workplace)
STEP 3: Where are all these dream mentors?
You now need to experiment, googling variations of your keywords list either together or individually — details for how to google are in the action point below. The goal of this is to find a list of the names of people who fit the description of what you’re looking for in a mentor as closely as possible. To do this, you google this formula: “[company name] [job title/area] [goal]”. For example, if you want someone who works in the publishing industry who is incredibly well-connected and recognised in marketing, you might write “Penguin Books, Marketing team, Award” and you’ll get loads of varied results that will mention a number of different people, either who have been quoted in articles, referenced as key players in winning awards, who have fronted large Penguin campaigns or who may even have written industry-focused articles themselves. This will require a some intensive skim reading through the results, but you should have a strong list of people who are well known within the industry by the end.
ACTION: The googling process you want to follow is:
- Google variations of keywords from your list in previous action point
- Click on the ‘news’ results tab
- Only show results from the last year or less
- Research through the articles for key names
- List all key names and job titles of people you think could be potential mentors on a spreadsheet
By the end of this exercise you should have a good list of people to contact who could be potential mentors. Whittle this list down to 3–5 people
STEP 4: What’s the contact method I should use?
So you have the names of the people you’re keen on. Now, we’re going to accumulate the different places you can contact them on.
ACTION: This entire section is an action. Make a note of each contact method on your spreadsheet next to each of their names.
Start with LinkedIn. Almost everyone who is established in their job has LinkedIn, and it’s likely they’ll reply if you message them. This means you need to get a LinkedIn account too, which will make it more likely for the person you’re asking to be a mentor to take you seriously. What will having a LinkedIn account prove?
- Your LinkedIn is essentially like a digital CV and will allow the other person to see that you’re serious about your career without them having to do research. They will want to be able to trust that you’re not going to waste their time so you need to show them you’re already making steps in the area they can help you with.
- It enables you to big yourself up in the right areas. If you haven’t got any experience, use the ‘about’ section to sell yourself. Write your bio as though you already have the role you want. For example, if you’re interested in journalism, you’d write “Aspiring journalist and documentary-maker with a specific passion for uncovering untold stories in gun-crime” or whatever it is you’re particularly interested in. Sell the dream, show that you’re going to be a big deal.
Now you have a LinkedIn, you need to add people — ideally having over 500 connections is a good sign that you’re legit, but as you’re looking to build contacts, you’ll be forgiven for having less. So spend some time adding people — and it’s ok to be shameless about it!
Now, you need to find all the people you have one your list of potential mentors and add their linkedin profiles to your spreadsheet. Don’t add them as a contact yet.
This one is harder as it’s tricky to find people’s emails. I’ve detailed a method for finding emails on this article about contacting companies who are hiring (skip to Step 4: Find the email you need). Once you’ve found their email (if you can), add this to the spreadsheet you have too.
Lots of industry types have twitter accounts. Although I would say twitter should be the last ditch attempt at contact (if you can’t find them on LinkedIn and email) because it’s more of a personal platform, it’s otherwise a good place to understand more about who that person is and identifying whether they’ll be a good mentor for you or not. It might be that you go on their twitter account and find out they actually live in Spain, in which case if you live in the UK they probably wouldn’t be the best person to mentor you. You can find out things from someone’s twitter account that you would never be able to find out on LinkedIn so it can be useful. And again, if you can’t find them on LinkedIn and their email is nowhere to be seen but they do have a twitter account, a DM might be the best way forward to make contact. Add their twitter account to your spreadsheet.
STEP 5: How do I start a conversation?
This is easy. To reiterate the point I made in the opening statement, remember is everyone is a slight narcissist at heart. So EVERYONE loves being asked for advice and/or their opinion on something. So this is how you should start — ask them if they’re free for a quick chat as you’re interested in getting into the industry/finding out about something they have experience in and you’d like their advice. It’s a case of explaining clearly and concisely who you are and what you’re looking for.
ACTION: Here’s some templates you can use for all three platforms.
LinkedIn or email template
Hi [insert first name], I hope you’re well! I know we haven’t met before but I’m hoping to get into advertising [or industry] and I’m looking for some advice about career paths [or something more specific]. I don’t know if you have 15 minutes, but I’d love to ask you a couple of questions as I read that you have experience in [insert choice of words] from the interview you did with Metro [or other connection] recently. Are you free over the next few days for a Zoom or call by any chance? I promise not to take up too much of your time! Best, [insert your first name]
Twitter template
Hi [insert first name], I’m hoping to get into advertising [or industry] and I’m looking for some advice - I read your interview in Metro [or other connection] and I’d love to ask you some questions via Zoom or call if you have 5 mins?Best, [insert your first name]
SIDE NOTE: In a post-covid world, asking someone for coffee is even more effective. Instead of asking for a zoom or call, say ‘It would be great to get your thoughts/advice on [insert something relevant] in exchange for a coffee or tea (somewhere convenient that isn’t too far from your office!) if you’re available?’ People love coffee and they love being treated like an expert who has advice to give. This offer is hard to say no to!
STEP 6: The actual sending of the request
Ok, so you have your shortlist of people to ask, you have the different channels of communication you can ask them on, you’ve composed the messages you’d like to send. All you have to do now is go down the list of people and send the note. You might choose to send a request to your first choice of mentor, wait to see if they get back to you within a certain time frame and if they don’t then move on to mentor option 2. But, the great thing about asking for advice to begin with is that you can email all your options at once and meet them all without the pressure of them all thinking you want them to mentor you. It’s totally ok to meet everyone and ask them all for genuine advice. Your knowledge pool will be richer for making multiple connections, even if they aren’t all going to mentor you. It’s up to you how you do it.
STEP 7: How do I convert asking for advice to getting a mentor?
Ok, so let’s say you’ve spoken to one of the people you emailed and they’re perfect. You instantly knew you wanted them to be your mentor. You then have to find out from them if they’re up for it. Again, this is easy. Just ask — but make sure you’re flattering them as much as possible because it’s true, flattery gets you everywhere.
ACTION: In terms of phrasing, I suggest making sure you include the following.
- Mention how good they are at advice and thank them — ‘I found your advice invaluable, thank you for spending time helping me’
- Softly imply you’ll be in regular contact — ‘I’d love to keep you informed about my career progress. I’d love to keep coming to you for advice!’
- Mention the word mentor but keep it light and make sure you make it clear that you know they don’t have unlimited time — ‘Would you have the time to be… a kind of… mentor to me?’
It’s totally okay to skip the third part. In order to be a mentor to someone you don’t have to label it as such. All the mentors we’ve had in the past, we’ve never actually called mentors — it’s just kind of naturally evolved into a mentor-mentee relationship.
The one thing you need to make sure to remember moving forward is that you must be aware that a mentor is giving up their time and energy to help you. This shouldn’t be a take-only relationship. Think about the little things you can do to repay them — pay for the coffee, send them regular pictures and updates about your journey with a ‘no response needed’ line at the beginning/end, mention them if you’re ever being interviewed for a bit of press… these are all things that will keep the relationship positive for both of you.
This article has actually been turned into a workshop by the author Sam and her business partner Mae. Watch or listen to them chat through the reasons for creating the article and how they’ve actioned these points in their own lives here.
This workshop is the first in a series titled ‘The Career & Self-Development Series by ERIC’. Click here to see the rest of the workshops — all are action-focused and designed to not only help you know what you want from a career but also find companies that are hiring, get in touch with them, interview with them and find people who can help you get the future you want.
Mae & Sam run ERIC together, a community that empowers Gen Z creatives through career & self-development content.
ERIC are launching a career and self-development app. Sign up to be an app tester at meet-eric.co/app.
