Preparing Students for Career Success

Editor's Notes

1. Hello and welcome to our presentation, Job Skills for the Future.   (Introduce yourself and Francine.)   You may be asking, why are we focusing on the future and not the present…especially if you need a job right now?   Because the skills we will be telling you about are already being highly prized in the most innovative companies, and those are the companies that are growing and adding jobs. So it’s important to know about these skills and gaining experience with them.   Even if you don’t work for a particularly innovative company, there are things that you can do right now to not only increase your own skills, but convince your boss that your company needs to do things differently in order to survive—and thrive—in the new economy. And if you’re looking for a new job, these are skills that you need to start learning and experiencing—even if you apply them to a volunteer position.
2. What is a mentor? When I worked at Columbia University, I coordinated the mentor program for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. There has been a lot of attention on the important of mentoring in STEM fields, especially to help the field embrace diversity. We had a small but terrific book that I used, with the title, “Advisor, Teacher, Role Model, Friend” – I love this title because it really sums up the supportive aspects of the relationship … however, recent research has been examining very concrete benefits of mentoring and characteristics of mentor relationships that led to these benefits. We knew mentors were important, but now there’s more evidence of the relationship between mentoring and various measures of job success. But recent research shows that having a mentor: improves job placement (Carter & Silva, 2010) Leads to higher compensation (Carter & Silva, 2010) Also - increases promotions (Catalyst, 2002) Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and an adjunct faculty member at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, & she studies mentor relationships. She found that certain activities provide even greater benefits. This type of mentor relationship is referred to as sponsorship, and her most recent book is called, Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor! So what is sponsorship? Give example – mentor who takes mentee to lunch… chummy … VS. invites to important meetings, and asks to sit on committees – gets more results A mentor acts as a sponsor by doing two or more of the following (Hewlett, 2011): expand the perception of what the protégé can do facilitate connections between the protégé and senior leaders promote the protégé’s visibility open up career opportunities for the protégé offer advice on the protégé’s appearance and executive presence make connections for the protégé outside the company and give advice to the protégé Here are some of the benefits of sponsorship: it has been shown to have a significant impact on whether employees ask for pay raises (Hewlett, 2011) request the stretch assignments that lead to advancement (Hewlett, 2011). note: while women may have numerous mentors, men are more likely to have sponsors. (Hewlett, 2011 and Carter & Silva, 2010) You can help your students by: Encouraging them to find and develop mentor relationships, Become aware of the activities that are sponsorship
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5. Hello and welcome to our presentation, Job Skills for the Future.   (Introduce yourself and Francine.)   You may be asking, why are we focusing on the future and not the present…especially if you need a job right now?   Because the skills we will be telling you about are already being highly prized in the most innovative companies, and those are the companies that are growing and adding jobs. So it’s important to know about these skills and gaining experience with them.   Even if you don’t work for a particularly innovative company, there are things that you can do right now to not only increase your own skills, but convince your boss that your company needs to do things differently in order to survive—and thrive—in the new economy. And if you’re looking for a new job, these are skills that you need to start learning and experiencing—even if you apply them to a volunteer position.