Boost Your Career When You Mentor Others

Hi Reader,

This week, a former coworker asked me “How can I prepare to grow my career?”

As a data analyst, he knew he should build his personal brand and visibility, but he wasn’t comfortable with public speaking. He’s a lot more comfortable with talking to individuals one-on-one than being in front of a large group

I suggested for him to consider mentoring through his college alumni association.

When you serve as a mentor with your college alumni association, you also boost your own career along with other benefits for your family.

I see mentoring provides 7 different benefits for you as a mentor. I’m a fan of gaining multiple benefits with one simple activity. I’ll share those reasons for you today.

The 7 Benefits of Becoming an Alumni Mentor

I’ve been a mentor in my college alumni associations for the last ten years, both with UCLA and Stanford. Over the years, I’ve lost count on the number of people I’ve mentored just from universities.

I’ve had a rewarding experience as a mentor. Among the various things you can do to build up your career, mentoring at universities is one of the easier things anyone can to do.

If you didn’t go to college, or otherwise not part of any alumni organization, you can still consider mentoring via other non-profit organizations as well.

For example, I’ve also mentored with the INFORMS professional society. I know other people who have mentored in non-profits like Year Up, Women in Tech, veteran mentoring programs, and various other non-profit community groups.

For today, I’ll talk specifically about college alumni mentoring programs, but the same advice would apply to most any other groups too.

1. Feel Good In Helping Others

Mentoring others is a simple way to pay it forward in your profession. You can feel good that you are contributing to the life of another person.

In your career and life, you’ve felt pressures at work and hardships that you have gone through. As a mentor, you can feel some satisfaction knowing that your hard-earned experiences are valuable in helping somebody else.

When you mentor others, the activity helps you think outside of your own daily problems, and shifts your mind towards gratitude, which helps your own well-being. (see Volunteering Is Good For Your Health)

2. Put It On Your Resume

When you mentor as part of an organization, you can list your mentoring activities on your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Future recruiters, employers, partners, and clients will see and respect your contributions to the community with your volunteering.

Mentoring others is seen as a form of leadership, particularly servant leadership.

3. Extend Your Professional Network

I advise people to grow their professional network as part of a fundamental strategy to grow their career options. Mentoring is one way to extend your professional network.

If you become a hiring manager, the college students that you mentor today can potentially become your new hires in the future.

Additionally, your mentees can later refer you into their companies as they disperse throughout industry, and possibly help you land a job in those companies.

4. Diversify Your Network

Be mindful to keep diversity in your professional network. If you keep a diversity of people in your network, you get more value and strength from your network.

As you progress in your career, and as you age in your life, you’ll still want to have a diverse group of ages represented in your network.

Imagine the alternative, where if you only connect with your classmates and peers and very senior leaders, then your future network will end up shrinking when those people start dropping out of the workforce due to early retirement or health issues or relocations.

Instead, plan on continuing to add new workforce members into your network through mentorships throughout your career.

5. Learn from Reverse Mentoring

When you mentor college students, you create the potential for reverse mentoring.

In reverse mentoring, it is the seasoned mentor who learns new things from the mentee. The college-aged mentee might share with you about the latest trends in Discord or YouTube shorts or other pop culture, to help keep you relevant in the mainstream.

Additionally, as a seasoned professional, you may be working at a big mega-company where all the technologies used were proprietary custom-built in-house systems, irrelevant in other companies.

Learn from someone who’s starting off in more conventional environments with industry-standard tools and systems that they learned from their internships and classes, to help you stay relevant.

6. Role Model Leadership For Your Own Children

If you have older children, they learn from watching what you do, regardless of what you tell them. If you’re active in helping others in the community, they will learn from your role modeling.

Life values are caught not taught. For children, they watch what you do as a role model, for better or for worse. If you want them to grow up to lead in the community and be helpful to others, the best way is for them to see you do the same as a role model. Spend time to mentor others to show your family what it looks like to help others.

By the time my children went to college, us parents had very little influence over them. They decided to step up to lead groups and clubs, organize events open to the general public, teach younger students, and start influencing people online as social media influencers.

They chose to volunteer to engage with people in their communities not from direct prompting from parents, but through their own free choice after watching us parents as role models.

7. Prepare For College Legacy Applications

If you want your children to attend the same private college as you, some schools consider legacy applications.

Legacy applications could be controversial, but are still considered by some schools to give special consideration to the children of alumni. The school’s admission office may consider the alumni parent’s involvement with the school in the child’s application.

If you’re like most people and are unable to donate a ton of money to the school, you can still stay involved with the school’s alumni association as a mentor.

The university might take your alumni activity in consideration in your child’s application based on their policies, but it’s not guaranteed. (See Colleges that Consider Legacy Status)

Ways to Alleviate Concerns About Alumni Mentoring

For people who have concerns about alumni mentoring programs, here are some things I’ve seen to alleviate those concerns. In general, along with guidelines, the alumni mentoring programs use special software for matching mentors and mentees, with safeguards for data privacy.

• Want only one mentee per year? No problem—the software lets you set the maximum number of mentees you’re willing to take on. You can set the meeting frequency with the mentee, perhaps a monthly 1-hour Zoom meeting for 6 months.
• Have data privacy concerns about sharing your contact info with strangers? The software allows mentors and mentees to control what personal info, if any, is shared. The software can even enable private messaging, audio calls, and online video meetings without either person revealing their personal contact info.
• Concerned about “random” students contacting you? In the software, you can manage your mentor profile to describe the type of mentees you’re willing to accept. The mentor also has the option to decline any mentoring request without needing to provide a reason. I do not advise mentors to initiate reaching out to new mentees though, as that’s somewhat awkward and not socially appropriate.
• Unsure what advice to share? As a mentor, you don’t need to give advice to your mentee. Mentors are not advisors nor coaches nor sponsors, although the role can expand towards those directions. As a mentor, all you need is to share your own personal experiences based on the mentee’s questions. What were your own career decisions and outcomes? The mentees may have multiple mentors that they’re learning from. The mentees will make up their own career and life decisions for their individual situations, after being more informed by hearing about what happened in your life.

The people eligible to participate in the alumni mentoring program should already be vetted by the school as people who have a direct affiliation with the school, and in good standing. This structure should provide a decent level of accountability and trust within the school community for mentors and mentees. The school will also give guidelines to everyone on what successful mentorships look like.

Final Thoughts

For my former coworker who wasn’t comfortable with public speaking, I’m confident that he can be a marvelous mentor. When he listens and talks to someone as an audience of one, he will build confidence to speak with larger groups later. If he volunteers in his college alumni mentoring program, he will also gain all the benefits that I listed above.

Each of us should have mentors in our lives.

• ​Mentors and Coaches Are the GPS for Your Career​

Each of us should also be a mentor in other people’s lives.

If you become a mentor, you'll get benefits for your career too.

You can do this.

If you would like additional help with steps to grow your career or business or team, please reach out. I'd love to help. I specialize with data professionals (analysts, data science, data/AI/ML engineering), but also have had 12 years experience coaching all types of professionals. Schedule a consultation or email me for more info.

Best regards,
Jimmy Wong

P.S. You can email me to learn more or to schedule a free 15-minute introductory call.

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Jimmy Wong Coach, speaker, and entrepreneur enabling people to thrive in the age of AI. Data science leader with 12 years experience at the LinkedIn company and 27 years in the industry. Visit aijimmy.com​ ​​​​​​

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