January is the perfect time to set personal and professional goals for the year ahead. Becoming a mentor or mentee can help you to achieve those goals!
Find a mentor
A mentor will work with you to help clearly identify the key goals you want to achieve this year. They will help you plan how to achieve these goals within a realistic timescale and help set milestones to monitor your progress along the way.
Become a mentor
Being a mentor not only benefits the mentee but can be very rewarding to the mentor in terms of gaining satisfaction from seeing others progress, providing the opportunity to practise and develop management skills and continuing professional development.
One example of how mentoring can be rewarding to both mentors and mentees is the partnership between Jo and her two mentees at RPS; Darrell and Ryan. Despite the distance between them both mentees have been able to work with Jo to set goals and receive guidance to ensure they are on the right track to becoming Registered Engineers.
Mentor: Jo Parker
Job Title: Director
Company: Watershed Associates
Length of time in the water industry: For ever!
In a mentoring partnership with: Darrell Muldoon and Ryan Dukes
Why did you Sign up to the Mentoring Platform and what do you hope to achieve from the experience?I signed up to put something back into an industry I love and to ‘pay it forward’ as a thanks to all the people who helped me in my career
How have you found the process so far?Very interesting. Ryan and Darrell are working hard to become technicians and eventually chartered and have been moving forward steadily. Sadly they are based a long way from me but regular e mails and phone calls are keeping us in touch.
Mentee: Darrell Muldoon
Job Title: Graduate Engineer
Company: RPS Group
Length of time in the water industry: 1 year
In a mentoring partnership with: Jo Parker
Why did you Sign up to the Mentoring Platform and what do you hope to achieve from the experience? I signed up to the Mentoring Platform as I was looking for some additional guidance on how to achieve professional status. I am currently aiming to become an Engineering Technician and then ultimately a Chartered Engineer once I have more experience within the industry.
How have you found the process so far? I found the process of signing up and finding a mentor very straight forward. My mentor has been very helpful in order to point me in the right direction in the early stages of my professional career. Regular contact with my mentor has definitely kept me thinking about how I can progress in the future.
Mentee: Ryan Dukes
Job Title: Graduate Engineer
Company: RPS Water
Length of time in the water industry: 1.5 Years
In a mentoring partnership with: Jo Parker
Why did you Sign up to the Mentoring Platform and what do you hope to achieve from the experience? One of my career goals is to become a Chartered Engineer so signing up for the Mentoring Programme was an obvious decision to make. RPS Water are very supportive of employees pursuing professional development and joining the Mentoring Programme was something that they highly recommended. Ultimately, I was hoping to gain guidance and advice from a mentor who has been through the process of professional development themselves, but since joining the Mentoring Programme and starting my mentoring partnership with Jo, I can already see more benefits from having a mentor.
How have you found the process so far? So far, I have found the mentoring process to be rather beneficial with keeping me on track to meet my professional development goals. Since becoming my mentor, Jo has kept in contact regularly which I feel has helped me keep focused on pursuing and achieving my targets. Jo has been able to give me guidance and advice through the various parts of my application for the Engineering Technician status.
[L-R: Jo Parker, Darrell Muldoon & Ryan Dukes]
Feeling inspired? CLICK HERE to find out more about becoming a mentor or a mentee and sign up to our online mentoring programme.
