How finding the right mentor will help your UX design career?
👋 Hello I’m Ratta currently an ambassador of ADPList — Amazing Design People List
Many people keep asking me about this question since I posted on my LinkedIn that I talked with 72 mentors, so now I want to update you that I spoke with 85 mentors on ADPList.org.
🤔 What is the mentor? In my opinion mentor means learning from someone who wants you to grow.
On ADPList have more than 2500+ mentors, so which one should I start to talk with:
1. Choose a mentor based on your company that you are interested in.
For example, if you want to join Google, start talking with mentors from Google and asking them questions.
- What are the candidates that they are looking for to join their team?
- What is the job interview process? If possible, they can tell you.
- What is their day-to-day life as a UX designer?
If you start to talk with mentors based on your interest, you will have a ton of questions to ask them, and the conversation will go well.
2. Choose a mentor based on the position you want to be in.
For example, if you want to become a UX Researcher, Interaction Designer or UX Engineer, you need to look for mentors doing that position.
It will not make sense if you want to become a UX Researcher and you start talking with an Interaction designer mentor. I would say you can talk with a different field mentor, but when you don’t know where to start, you can choose based on the position you want to achieve first. This will not make you feel confused.
When you start to talk with a mentor you will get more insight from them asking them what the position looks like because I would say many times the things that they write on the job description on the company website is totally different when you are actually doing.
Like one famous sentence that we like to hear is :
“ Pay attention to what users do, not what they say — Nielsen Norman Group ”
But in this case, we will not only read from the job description, but we will ask from the people that work in that position in that company.
3. Choose a mentor by asking yourself, “Do I admire this person?”
If you admire this person for his/her achievements and industry experience. When you admire someone’s experience, you feel that you want to succeed like them, and it will motivate you and help you achieve your goal.
So, your mentor should ideally be someone who shares your professional outlook and perhaps has even accomplished the goals you hope to achieve.
4. Lastly, choose a mentor from the review.
If you don’t know where to start and don’t have any ideas on your interest, you can start reading the reviews on their profile.
Reading the reviews will guide you on how the mentor teaches about or what the mentoring call looks like, what are the topics that people like to ask them.
I encourage people to write a review for mentors that they studied with. I also always write reviews for mentors because I appreciated and acknowledge their contributions to my journey.
So, everything that I shared is based on my experience, and there are still many ways to start choosing a mentor.
I’m curious on how you choose a mentor. Feel free to share your thoughts here and your takeaways on social media.
Connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to keep the conversation going.
