Feeling “Stuck” in Your Career? Get a Mentor

Published by Sharon Jumper

May 2020

What is a mentor?

A mentor, simply put, is someone who has advanced in their career along a trajectory that you hope to follow and who can help you along the path to achieving your personal, professional, academic, financial, or lifestyle goals.

Here are a few quotes that discuss the roles that mentors can play:

• The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a mentor as a “trusted counselor or guide.”

• "The modern mentor can elevate both your mind and your career in a way that cannot be taught in school, a boardroom or on a business trip," said Demetri Argyropoulos, CEO of Avant Global. 

• "A mentor can serve as a sounding board at critical points throughout your career," said Diane Domeyer, executive director of staffing firm The Creative Group. "They can provide guidance on career management you may not be able to get from other sources and an insider's perspective on the business, as well as make introductions to key industry contacts."

• Doña Storey, OPEN Mentorship Institute mentor and American Express OPEN advisor on procurement, noted that “mentors can help their mentees identify and avoid business pitfalls, and work through the challenges ahead of them.”

Finding the Right Mentor

In the traditional work environments of yore, a mentor often was assigned to new employees or those in whom upper management saw promise. These days, when many organizations view employees as fungible (like adjunct faculty) and over 36% of American workers are in the gig economy, having a mentor assigned to you is rare. Using your boss as a mentor can also be risky - what if you have aspirations for their job or are unhappy in your current path? Telling your boss these things could either be threatening to them or mark you as not being a team player.

You may be able to find a mentor in a community, alumni, or professional organization. The potential downside to these sorts of “free” mentors who have little or no stake in your success is that the time that they are able to devote to you or the guidance that they are able to give to you may be limited.

In “free,” non-employment settings, developing a relationship with a mentor can also take time - and time may be scarce when you need to act or learn quickly.

It is for these reasons that many people hire a paid performance coach or mentor. We actually have 23 mentors on the Epic Learning Team, each with diverse experiences, credentials and skill sets.

What Can an Epic Mentor Do for You

Our mentoring packages are based on time - you can buy a 30-minute consultation or as many hours as you’d like to use. Some of our mentors even offer discounts based on multi-hour package purchases. Mentoring is tailored to your needs and your goals. You can use our time to cover whatever areas or skills gaps that are of interest to you.

Our team members aren’t just educators - they’re also business owners, subject matter experts across a broad range of disciplines, and professionals who are highly sought to consult by governments, businesses, non-profit organizations, and educational institutions. We’re also international! Members of our team have lived and worked on six of the seven continents - a few of us got very close to Antarctica this Spring…maybe we’ll hit our seventh continent later this year!

Some examples of areas that our Epic Learning Team Mentors have helped clients with include:

• How to land the first (and hardest to obtain) faculty position

• CV, resumé, and LinkedIn profile revisions

• Creation of portfolios and websites

• Development and implementation of personal branding and content marketing strategies

• Escaping career ruts by “trading up” employers

• Identifying and developing strategies for employment or entrepreneurship opportunities

• Professional networking and social media strategies

• Small business planning

• Covid-19 economic relief

• Tax and financial planning for independent contractors, adjunct faculty, and entrepreneurs

• Career transitions

• Income diversification

• Upskilling in entrepreneurship, leadership, technology, media, project management, and instructional design

• Law and doctoral program applications and admissions materials

• Application and selection for military officer candidate schools and military academies

• Expatriate employment, consulting, and business opportunities

• Edupreneurship and starting a consulting business

Get to Know the Epic Mentor Team

You can view more about our team and our offerings, on our websites, EpicLearningTeam.com and EpicDesignTeam.com.

We post dozens of job leads in education, instructional design, and other learning/development consulting roles in business, government, and non-profit organizations in our private Facebook group, Epic Learning Team, and our private LinkedIn group, Online Teaching Jobs.

We also host a private LinkedIn Group, Online Learning Experts, that has over 10,000 members who are K-12, higher education, corporate, and business leaders in online learning and development.

We would love to work with you and help you to meet your personal, professional, financial, and lifestyle goals through mentoring.