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Lifting Up Others Mentors + Mentees = Empowerment at Work
Lifting Up Others:
Mentors + Mentees = Empowerment at Work
Every strong business knows the potential of hiring newly minted Americans – or they should. Did you know? The Pew Research Center says immigrants and their descendants are projected to account for 88% of United States population growth through 2065, assuming current immigration trends continue. Ensuring these highly qualified employees receive effective professional guidance is essential for both the new immigrant and the company’s bottom line. Enter mentoring, which matches new additions to the company with current employees tasked to help show them the ropes. Mentoring programs are flourishing at top-rung companies and are expanding across the country. They’re also becoming a mainstay of immigrant employment councils and organizations helping new Americans adjust to the professional landscape. So how does a mentoring program work? Usually, a new American will enter a workplace and be matched with a more senior or more established colleague at the same professional level. They’ll connect a few times a week to discuss the transition into the workplace. While not everyone makes a good mentor, a good mentor is someone willing and able to devote the necessary time to the new employee as well as really show an interest and care about the person they’re mentoring. Mentorship can be a huge time commitment, if a mentor takes on more than a few mentees.
• DO: Ensure your mentees are absolutely job ready. • DON’T: Forget to check in to see whether the relationships are working out. Feedback is important to the health of the program, and employers are just as much a part of that as the participants.
Mentorship DO’s and DON’Ts for the mentor
• DO: Give mentees access to your social and professional network. Networking is one of the most valuable tools in today’s working world if you want to eke out new opportunities or seek recommendations.
• DON’T: Be too shy to offer hard feedback – you’re not helping the mentee by skirting around any issues. If their resume is too specific, tell them.
Mentorship DO’s and DON’Ts for mentees
• DO: Try to open up to your mentor. Career anxieties and even personal problems can overlap and impact your work. It’s okay to bring this up with your mentor, as it’s all part of the normal transition to a new country. Mentors can help with things as seemingly innocuous as finding a good neighborhood to live in, not just how to get ahead in the boardroom. • DON’T: Lean too heavily on your mentor. Use the tools they give you and try to be a self-starter. They’re there to help, but they can’t necessarily earn you the promotion or the job. 2
By Jennifer Goldsmith Cerra, Director, Communications Herbein + Company, Inc.
On November 10, Women2Women (W2W) & De Mujer a Mujer will present “All Women’s Right Not Some Women’s Right” with Kate Ekanem Hannum, founder of Inspire Community Network (ICON). ICON is a volunteer-oriented non-governmental organization that implements rural communities’ development programs, advocacy programs for girls' right to quality education, women empowerment and youth development programs, and art and cultural development initiatives for marginalized creatives, in all six geopolitical regions of Nigeria: South-South, South-East, South-West, North-Central, North-West, and North-East, Nigeria-West Africa.
