Mentoring does not only let you know about the experiences of your mentor; as a mentee it provides an insight about yourself,  develop social skills, builds networking, obtain recommendations about your industry and creates further contacts within the field. It also creates confidence to apply techniques or learnings from the mentoring relationship to aspects of your own career.

“Mentoring is one of the most powerful experiences leaders enjoy. The role of mentor facilitates the ability to leave a legacy of significant work both in specific organisations and the profession. When approached in a positive and constructive manner, mentoring can make a significant difference in people’s lives.” (Karren Kowalski, 2019)

Describe and Evaluate

Sam Wilce’s role is Human resources Business partner at Melbourne Racing Club. During his time with MRC over three and a half years, Sam has been in differents roles: Human Resources Business partner, Human resources shared services manager People & Culture and Talent Acquisition Partner People and culture. Sam is a good friend of mine and an ex-colleague at Crown Towers Hotel Melbourne, where both of us worked in different operational roles for several years.

Sam has an extensive experience working in the Human resources field, holds a Bachelor of English from Loughborough University and post-graduate studies in Human Resources management & Employment Law at RMIT University; knowing Sam professionally and personally he has a very unique view about myself; also we share similar experiences as immigrants in Australia, his home country is England and mine is Chile, so professionaly both of us had to adjust our careers in synchrony to our life’s decisions.

Currently, I am in my last semester of studies and parallelly I am applying for jobs within my field Media; Sam during his mentoring has provided some advice of what to do in a job interview as well. Here are some of the highlights of this interview:

• Job interviews: during the process of job applications with multiple interviews, usually an interviewer will repeat questions about topics that were not satisfied with, so it is important to pay attention to them. Obtaining feedback on the spot, if the opportunity arises, to ask the interviewer if they see any point that I could work on, this is usually a door that can be opened and instantly generates a real idea about how the interview went, and if there is a next round and opportunity of improvement.
• Leadership: Good leadership in workplaces obtains the best results of the workers. The best managers are honest, provide guidance and coaching about the good and the bad. If you make a mistake, they tell you and then everyone moves on from there. Good leadership provide clear directions. A good advice for a new manager, is to listen first and then act, don’t arrive at the role changing everything immediately; it is better to check, listen and then take decisions after having a bit of experience on the role. Considering the ethical aspects of the role is important, all companies want to generate profit, but it must be done correctly, it cannot be profit before people.  
• Annual reports: Before applying for a job in a company, some good advice is to check their annual report. It will provide a broad scope of the company, it’s values, business decisions,  policies and results. Considering this information, write a detailed cover letter, based in the common information.  
• Band-aid conversations: as a manager it is not easy to have conversations when people are not performing, the suggestion is once the problem is discovered to have a band-aid conversation at the early stages of the issue. It’s providing feedback and opportunity before it may become a bigger issue.
• Transferrable skills: leadership, management, good communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence for example are some of the key skills that Sam had transferred between fields. He has used them in hospitality and human resources sector, and he can identify them in myself and in my career journey. Our experience moving countries develops extra skills, such as adaptability and flexibility into a new culture; for example, in our cases we have taken some steps back with the change of countries, to then check opportunities and move forward within our career.
• Be open to changes: Diversity and Inclusion for example is a path that Sam is taking now within his field. With the right support and the right people around, anyone can be successful.

During my conversation with Sam, I also understood how I was perceived in a professional environment; Sam recognised in myself great people skills and work ethics; he mentioned that people gravitate towards me because I am very approachable, and I have very good transferrable skills as good communication (bilingual), empathy, leadership, and emotional intelligence. That I prefer honest and direct feedback and that the decision to change careers/field and go back to university is something that many people would like to do, but not many people do it because it is very scary; the reinvention here is a big asset. In a personal aspect, Sam sees me as a good person, with values, that I genuinely care and wanting to learn about many things and gain a lot of experience. All this information is very helpful for myself, because it let me know how I am perceived by others, and knowing about my strengths and weaknesses, also I am applying for jobs and having job interviews, so it has been of big help to understand the process.

As a final advice, Sam recommend reading Harvard business review, it has very good articles about leaders of different industries and a source of knowledge of best practices.

Reflection on learning and creation of actions

The course of ‘Design your career’ has given me tools and resources to build strategies and to create opportunities in my area of studies. As a summary, I have selected three main areas where this knowledge can be portrayed:

Portable skills

A 2017 report commissioned by The Foundation for Young Australian’s identified that there are seven job clusters in Australia’s workforce: the technologists, the generators, the artisans, the carers, the coordinators, the designers, and the informers. The report found for someone who has already trained for or worked in one job, 44 different jobs only request one additional skill and that did not necessarily require going back to university to obtain. Therefore, people can move between job clusters, rather than just moving within one industry.

Considering that job clusters associated with media producers are The Generators, due to the organizational skills and building effective relationships. It is essential for a producer to have a strong network of stakeholders within the industry to facilitate the generation of content.  The coordinators, especially communication skills and administrative tasks such as schedules, scripts, budgets, briefs, and tenders. Lastly, the technologists,with valuable skills in project management and a high level of digital literacy.

This provides me the knowledge and confidence to acknowledge first and then utilise some of my portable skills from my previous studies (Audiovisual and commerce) and work experience (TV and Hospitality) into my new career Communications (media); some of the key’s skills are: Organisational, Communication, Problem solving, Creativity, Financial skills, People skills.

Some actions to do with my portable’s skills are:

• Volunteering to gain experience and build networking within the industry.
• Complete a short course on management to complement existing qualifications and experience
• Utilise existing production skills to create content, such as videos, advertisements and broadcasting helping to gain knowledge of the industry and make connections
• Improve hard skills such as Industry preferred scheduling tools, budgeting software and other digital planning tools through self-learning or incorporate them into media production projects where possible.

Empathy phase & prototyping

The empathy phase via my empathy map helped me to understand my behaviours and values to discover my true passion and consistent themes.  To focus further I needed to brainstorm the various career pathways and then define my career problem and ideas of working as a media producer.  Then the prototype phase helps me to truly understand each step needed to test ideas and experiences before committing to a final decision.

Based on these learnings, I will gain experience using my current work in the corporate sector to develop ideas and knowledge within the communications department. For example: volunteering for internal projects at BHP relating to media, using my technical skills, scripting, shooting, editing videos for internal communications of new areas of workplace, Networking with media and communications teams within the company, applying for internal roles including graduate programs, completing training and development programs provided by BHP that relate to media and communications and looking for a mentor in the media and communications department.

Mentoring

Mentoring can help in so many ways the development of a career and life of a person, for example, you can learn about knowledge of job and/or industry, job challenges, career transition, skills and qualifications, employment opportunities, professional development ideas, job applications, company ideas and niches amongst many other tools. In my interaction with my mentor Sam Wilce, we discussed about the relevance of studies in roles.

Studies are important because help to create confidence, in his own experience the studies  helped Sam to consolidate and give security in itself and provided the technical and specifics of the role that he is currently doing in Human resources. We evaluated my idea of continuing some studies with a master’s degree in Global communication and we both agreed that is a great complement to my career and I am currently applying at university of Melbourne. Sam mentioned, “the studies can be the difference between two candidates at the moment of a job application, it will add an extra layer, more experience and it will open doors creating a voice of authority in a workplace in the future”.

REFERENCES:

Martin, R 2022, ‘Strategy is iterative Prototyping’, Harvard Business Review, 06 June, viewed 30 May 2022 < https://hbr.org/2014/06/strategy-is-iterative-prototyping?autocomplete=true>

Miller, J 2018, ‘40 questions to ask a mentor’, Forbes, 25 March, viewed 30 May 2022 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jomiller/2018/03/25/40-questions-to-ask-a-mentor/?sh=424d041c261b>

Foundation of Young Australians, 2017, The new basics, viewed 30 May 2022  <https://www.fya.org.au/report/the-new-basics/>

Keen, L 2016, ‘Careers can be divided into 7 ‘clusters’ and not particular professions’, Financial Review, 23 November, viewed 30 May 2022, < https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/management/careers-can-be-divided-into-7-clusters-and-not-particular-professions-20161123-gsvh02>

Kowalski, K, 2019, ‘Mentoring’, The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, vol. 50, no. 12, 540-541.