How to Find a Free Mentor and Why You Need One

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A mentor can be defined as a skilled individual who’s willing to support and guide a less experienced individual to help meet professional and personal goals. Mentors help navigate the way to evolve and develop, whilst delivering the feedback needed to help us ultimately change our mindset. You can learn more about mentoring here.

When it comes to mentoring, many people believe that finding an expert to help support is a pricey and confusing experience, but this isn’t always the case. Although some individuals do charge for mentoring, we believe that mentoring should be free and easily accessible for all. By offering free mentoring it helps remove any monetary bias, reduces any malicious intentions and ensures that the mentor is focused on actually helping their mentee grow and flourish. Which is why, throughout this article, we will be exploring how you can find a mentor for free. You’ll be surprised how easy it is!

Why you NEED a mentor

Before we talk about how to find a mentor, let’s briefly cover why you need one. So, if you're familiar with mentoring, then you know the significance and value mentoring can have on your life. However, for those of you who don’t know about mentoring, then, let’s talk about the huge spectrum of benefits for mentees:

• An increased self-confidence - both personally and professionally
• Improved mental health
• Goal-setting becomes easier
• Mentoring provides mentees with fresh perspectives
• Enhanced skill development
• The opportunity to network with other professionals
• Mentees are 5x more likely to gain a promotion in work
• Improved job satisfaction
• The ability to learn from others experiences and wisdom
• The opportunity to gain constructive feedback

When it comes to mentoring, the benefits are endless. Were you impressed with these? Well, it’s just the beginning. If you’re wondering how to find a free mentor, then keep reading.

1. Join PushFar

PushFar is the world's leading career progression and mentoring platform. With over 70,000+ members across the globe with professionals in every industry, you’ll be able to find a mentor with ease. With smart algorithm technology matching you with proposed mentors and the search functionality giving you the freedom to manually find a mentor, there’s somebody for everyone. The platform is accessible and easy to use, being available on both desktop and mobile, meaning that mentoring can take place from anywhere in the world. Finding a mentor using a platform like PushFar helps reduce the awkwardness of introductions because you know that the users are there ready to help others grow both personally and professionally. PushFar is an online environment where a thriving mentoring culture is already in place, with many of the mentors having years of experience in their careers and as mentors. This means that they know exactly what they can do to help your development and ensure you get the best mentoring experience possible.

2. LinkedIn

For those unfamiliar with LinkedIn, it’s a social media platform that is career and business-oriented. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with professionals in your field, with tons of guidance and insights being shared regularly on your newsfeed. With over 500 million users on the site, there’s an extensive range of professionals at your fingertips.

Although you can use pretty much any social media platform to reach out to a mentor, LinkedIn is the one that we advise. Using the search functionality on the platform, you can search for mentoring groups or people in your industry. Although reaching out to someone may seem daunting at first, the worst thing they can say is no. However, we don’t suggest reaching out as soon as you connect asking them to be your mentor, but instead taking the time to connect with them and understand more about their expertise before popping the question.

3. Friends and family

The likelihood is that your friends and family have connections from a huge range of industries with different levels of expertise. For example, you may be looking for a business mentor to help you grow your revenue. Well, it might turn out, your cousin was roommates with a successful entrepreneur. Whatever purpose you have in mind when looking for a mentor, your family, and friends are a great source to start enquiring. It never hurts to ask, with your family and friends knowing you better than anyone else, they will be able to recommend people they know you’ll form a strong and trustworthy connection with.

4. Co-workers

Surprisingly, when we discuss finding a mentor, many people forget we already have access to a wreath of knowledge and expertise, through our co-workers. They know exactly how things run in your organisation, so if your goal of finding a mentor is to help with your current career-related issues, then, why not ask the people who know it best. Whether you reach out to co-workers in another department to learn some of the skills they use every day or ask someone in a leadership position to show you the ropes, there’s always someone you can find that will help you.

Final thoughts

Mentoring isn’t a privilege and should be something that everyone has access to. Regardless of your age, race, gender, sexuality or any other factor, mentoring is something we should all be able to freely and actively take part in. Mentoring isn't one size fits and every mentoring relationship is unique. It may take connecting with a few people before finding a mentor that’s right for you, but once you get there, you’ll be glad you did.

To learn more about all things mentoring, click here to visit PushFar, the world's leading mentoring and career progression platform.