Why did you decide to become a mentor?
Thank you, I am glad to be here.
I believe that having a Mentor can help individuals achieve more than they think they can. During my early days, I had to switch fields from Biotechnology to Information Technology, which was not easy, but it was essential for me to stay relevant. I made many mistakes and learnt from the mistakes. At some point, I realized that I could have taken a different path to achieve my goals faster. I never had a mentor.
I wanted to be a mentor to anyone who needed a bit of help or needed someone to talk to figure things out. I want to be a partner in the mentee’s success story, and it is something that makes me smile. With Mentorcruise, it becomes easy to mentor people from diverse backgrounds and different nationalities. I love it because I learn a lot from the mentees as well.
How did you get your career start?
I have had a very unconventional career path. I never thought I would work as a Cloud Solution Architect with Microsoft when I started my career as a Biotechnologist. Although a promising area, Biotechnology is a field where you hardly use computers except for reading articles or Microsoft Excel. From there, I had to change my career many times. I have had different people talking to me, but I never had a Mentor to guide me throughout the process. At the start of my career, I was not even aware of the concept of Mentorship, and I feel that the current generation is lucky to have platforms such as Mentorcruise. They should utilize it to the best of their abilities.
How do you usually set up mentorships?
I keep it very simple. My priority is to understand the reason a mentee has applied for mentorship. Mentees often sense the need for a mentor without knowing the “why?”. I help them to figure that out and then design a structured program. The program could be - Regular 1-on-1s to guide them through a specific problem - A learning path - Hands-on activities
Eventually, my goal is to make the mentee feel more comfortable and confident with their problem than when they first approached me.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
The relationship between a Mentor and Mentee is a two-way lane. I have spoken to mentees from different countries and learnt the culture, way of interaction and many more, which has helped in my business trips. There is so much to learn from the mentees.
It has also helped me gain empathy and get different thought processes on many occasions that made much more sense than my own. I love helping people and I feel that this is one of the best ways to do that.