Did you know, that a third of young people don’t have any kind of mentor figure while growing up and while starting a career? Due to this, they miss out on the personal growth and development that a long-term mentorship brings with it and can often feel forsaken while pursuing a career or even handling day-to-day situations.
It is proven that mentorships have positive effects on young people in a large variety of personal, academic and professional situations. In fact, people who had a mentoring relationship at a younger age are more likely to hold leadership positions and mentor others themselves when they are older.
Mentors can help students to tackle a large variety of situations and are therefore one of the most personalized ways of education that exist. So why do so many people don’t have a mentor?
Finding the right mentor is difficult
You might have been there before: You have an idol, a really successful person with the skillset you want to have as well. One day, you finally brace up and write them on Twitter: “Will you be my mentor?”. You anxiously wait for a response, but — nothing. You just got ignored.
This might have many reasons: - The person is simply too busy. You might have asked someone who gets this questions a few times every day and is simply tired of saying: “Hey there, I’d love to mentor you, but I’m just too busy at the time, sorry!”- The person is not interested in mentoring people. Believe it or not — some people just don’t like to teach or mentor other people, you will have to respect that.- You might be asking too much. Even though they are open to giving you support from time to time, they don’t want to commit to you in a mentoring relationship. It is very unlikely that the person actively has negative feelings against you, so don’t worry. Mentors are rare — most people might not know that they actually would be good mentor material.
How can I find a mentor?
There are a lot of ways to find a mentor, and if you were actively looking for one — you will have read most of them already. - Get involved with a community and look for people there- Instead of looking for successful/famous people as mentors, look for people in your network that have potential.- Look for mentors outside of your line of work- Let the mentor find you All of these reasons have a good right to exist, but there is something else as well — and this is where the self-advertisement comes in. Sorry! Meet MentorCruise.
The goal of MentorCruise is to connect aspiring, young students with experienced and awesome industry professionals in the technology industry, who are willing to mentor people. We plan to offer mentorship opportunities in Engineering & Data, Design and Business. This can be free or for some small fee — it is your and the mentor’s choice.
MentorCruise is currently in development, but we would love to have you on board already. Visit our website and get notified about our launch and new updates, such as early access. You can also follow us on Twitter, we appreciate it!