By Peggy McKee
I found a great article on Employmentdigest.net that points out how helpful a mentor can be to your career, and gives you some ideas about what to look for in a mentor as well as how to find one–like at your company, in a professional organization, or a friend who’s farther along in their career path than you are. A mentor can be a tremendous asset to you in your career. Someone who’s been where you are, who knows the obstacles you face and can help steer you around them, can make your climb up the corporate ladder smoother and faster.
A mentor can coach you to success in your medical sales career!
You can think of a mentor as a coach–someone who can help you stand back and see the bigger picture, and function as a source of objective, constructive criticism about how you play the game, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what issues you might face (and what to do about them). This sort of relationship happens all the time when someone is trying to improve his or her skills in any given arena–people use athletic coaches, voice coaches, personal trainers…you get the drift. For instance, my nephew hired a swim coach to help him shave a few seconds off his time and went from 15th in the nation to 8th. That’s a big deal. That’s the difference that will mean not just trophies and personal success, but scholarships. In your career, that could be the difference in coming in second or third place for a job offer or promotion, or being far and away the first choice candidate who gets the job.
So what I’m saying is, finding a mentor can make all the difference in the success of your career—but you need to find someone with some skills. If you can’t find someone to serve as a mentor for you, it’s worth it to hire someone, like a career coach. I do offer career coaching services to those involved in medical sales (and other types of sales), and I might be the right fit for you, but then again, I might not. The most important thing is to find someone with experience in your field that you also feel very comfortable working with. It’s a small investment, but provides a potentially huge payoff for you and your career.
