Mentoring

Having a mentor is very useful. You can use a mentor as a coach. A person who has gained enough experience can act as a mentor and provide guidance. I have always looked for opportunities to mentor in my areas of interest. Some of the articles I have written earlier reflect that. I have written a few articles on career when I was a columnist for a website for a few months. I stopped those columns when the website was stopped.

I have provided guidance through e-mail. It was sporadic. I was attracted to SiliconIndia website as it has a mentor network. It struck to me as unique idea. I signed up and now I mentor couple of people who are interacting with me through the network on SiliconIndia. It is a professional network that has features to blog, connect and communicate with other professionals. Uniqueness of Mentor Network is: you can identify your areas of expertise and you can accept mentors based on their interests. You can engage in a dialog and save all your conversations during the process. I liked the virtual mentoring concept. I hope to provide mentoring to a few people through this forum using my experience and ideas.

You can also do it, if you are keen on providing mentoring. You can also find a mentor for yourself.

If you have known me for years and you wish to get my advice in a structured way, we can use this forum on SiliconIndia. Let me know. I get featured as a top mentor sometimes on this network. I think the concept has not gained enough interest but it has huge potential.

Related Links

My Articles on Career
SiliconIndia

Toughest Interview Questions

During interview we face questions which are tricky ones. They are used to assess our attitude, self awareness and lot of other attributes. I recently came across this article which gives tips on how to answer 64 toughest interview questions.

While I am on topic of interviews, sometime back I was searching for interview questions and I found this site called techinterviews.com. This site contains library of questions for various technical skills. You will find this resource also useful if you are planning to attend a technical interview.

Link to Article: How to Answer The 64 Toughest Interview Questions (PDF file, opens in a new window)

Technicalinterview.com (opens in a new window)

Are you playing at work?

Are you in a role that allows you to utilize your strengths? If yes, you will be literally playing at work. You are doing something that you enjoy every moment and then work will be like play.

In most cases you are in a role that utilizes your strengths but you may not be aware of it. Lack of this awareness may lead you to approach work as burden instead of play. To make it easy, I would recommend doing a SWOT analysis. Match your job functions with your strengths and see if > 80% of your job requirements match your strengths. Gap should fall in your weakness area and this can be an opportunity to improve and excel in your role.

Remember when you are using your natural strengths at work you are enjoying every moment.

If you feel otherwise, learn to enjoy what you do till you can find something that matches your strengths.

Other ways to bring this awareness to your front are:

• Find a mentor who can provide you guidance
• Work with your manager to fine tune your job expectations to your strengths. You have all the rights to demand a right job for you.

Related Articles

Careers and Talents
Discover you strengths and Grow by using your strengths

Career Change Decision

Making a career change is a tough decision. It is a decision you would not want to rush and consider all possible factors before taking the plunge. I was reading a book by Robert Heller recently and found a template to make an assessment. I have copied this and you can view this using the link at end of this post.

It is not only during career change but during various decisions at work or in personal life, it is important to consider all possible factors and rate them accordingly and take a right decision. Decision making should not be done under emotional circumstances. If you do it, you should not regret such decisions. At work it is also important to document decision making factors so that others can appreciate the factors considered.

Hope you will find this template useful

Career: Grow by using your strengths

I have written earlier about SWOT Analysis. When we are aware of strengths it becomes to easier to utilize the strengths at work. I have read this book “Now, Discover your strengths” which has made this a very structured attempt to identify strengths of individuals. I will post a brief extract from the book in a separate post.

Based on lot of survey data, Gallup has launched a StrengthsFinder Tool which allows one to identify Top 5 Strengths of any individual which play a pre-dominant role on how we operate at work. I found this a great tool and would recommend others also to take this tool. To take the StrengthsFinder survey you need to buy one of the books listed on the website and get the code. Certainly the books are worth reading. I would recommend buying this book and take the Survey. This will be a worthwhile investment that will serve you rest of your career.

This helped me identify my Top 5 strengths which I can easily recognize. This helped me gain better insight into the same and make this as an advantage in my career.

Link to article: SWOT Analysis
Link to StrengthsFinder: https://www.strengthsfinder.com/