The Best Way to Get Ahead at Work

Isn't it better to work smarter than harder? Wouldn't you like to cut down the time it takes to get a promotion at work? Career advice is easy to obtain but not always so easy to follow. If you do only one thing this year to advance your career, it should be to get yourself a mentor.

Some companies have a formal mentoring program which sets up new hires with a mentor on their first day of work. This is a great opportunity for meeting someone new in the corporation. However, it's too random a match-up and there's no guarantee that the mentor really want to be a mentor in the first place. Also, the mentor may not have the right social positioning or patience to be effective in helping you to get ahead.

The best way to obtain a mentor is to seek one out on your own. When you find a mentor this way, you will be able to choose someone with the knowledge you need to learn and the connections you need to make in order to position yourself for promotions.

A great reason to have a mentor is that he or she may let you collaborate and contribute to projects that are usually worked on by people in the positions that are one grade or level above what you are ranked at. If you can work on a few of these type of projects, you can easily apply for promotions and you can say that you already know how to perform function "a", function "b", etc. You are more likely to be hired because your new manager will not have to train you.

Your mentor will be able to advise you on the way to answer questions in your interviews. If your mentor has been in the company long enough and knows enough people, he or she might keep you informed of new positions before they become available or even give another hiring manager in the company an endorsement on your behalf.

This kind of preferential treatment is well deserved if you have taken the time to cultivate a business relationship with a mentor. In the corporate world, it's extremely difficult to stand out amongst both internal and external candidates all trying to be hired for the job you want. A mentor can make it easier for you to rise up to the level you desire. You may be lucky enough for a mentor to take a liking to you and become your mentor without your effort. But it's more likely that you will have to find your own mentor in the company.

For more information on how to get hired at a new job, see my article titled Don't Go to an Interview Without This One Item.