LAST week we celebrated National Mentoring Day. It's a day dedicated to celebrating mentoring, recognising professional excellence and the benefits mentoring can bring, as well as encouraging more people in Northern Ireland and across the UK to get involved.
CIM has supported Irish marketers for over 100 years. We launched our mentoring platform in September 2014 to boost professional development and empower Irish marketers across the industry.
You may have thought that all mentoring activities have stopped due to the Covid pandemic, but you would be wrong. Over the past months, we have hosted online webinars, published advice articles and our mentors have taken to video conferencing to carry on their mentoring duties to help support Irish marketers in these challenging times.
In this article, I wanted to share my thoughts and top tips on why mentoring is a golden opportunity that Irish marketers should consider at this difficult time.
1) Learning new ideas and expanding your knowledge - Having a mentor gives you access to someone who can help you work through your thoughts relating to a change in career, getting a promotion, learning a new skill, identifying the skills you need and expanding you network. They will support, challenge you and help you meet your objectives (once you have identified them).
There's a lot to gain as an Irish marketer, from pursuing a mentorship. A mentor can be someone who guides you through overarching career decisions, personal development and growth, but could also be someone to support you on a specific project or to build a skill set such as expanding into marketing design or exploring the intricacies of advertising.
Mentoring is so much more than professional development and often it'll seep into other aspects of your life, confidence building, networking, opportunities to expand your experience and knowledge.
2) Embrace openness when choosing a mentor - Whatever your career path, experienced marketers have a lot to share. It could be how they changed careers or moved through different roles or industries. Sharing those experiences and the skills you have learned along the way can change any marketer’s entire career.
Avoid choosing a mentor in your sector, you can learn so much from those who have had very different experiences and career journeys from other walks of life.
3) Taking the next step in your marketing career - Marketing is a fast-paced career and often we don't take time to take the time to plan ahead for our own professional development and growth journey. Having a mentor gives you the head space to think about your role within your career journey / organisation and what you strive to achieve next, exploring avenues you may not have considered or thought you could reach for.
To find out more about how you can benefit from CIM’s mentoring platform, visit our dedicated webpage via www.cim.co.uk
Eileen Curry is chair of CIM Ireland
