How To Highlight Mentoring Skills in Your Cover Letter

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Employers love to see mentoring skills on a candidate’s application. They know that a candidate with mentoring skills and experience will be able to provide invaluable benefits to the company.

Amid the drastic changes over the last few years in how we work, mentorship is more important than ever. Employers are looking for candidates who are adept at supporting employees in their career development and growth to enhance job satisfaction and decrease turnover rates.

Beyond highlighting mentoring skills on your CV, your cover letter provides the perfect opportunity to provide a little more context for your mentoring experience. According to a recent Resume Genius survey, 83% of hiring managers always or frequently read cover letters, so it’s the perfect place to showcase all the goals you helped inspire and achieve.

Here are three ways to highlight mentoring skills in your application’s cover letter:

1. Describe Your Mentoring Experience

If you have some mentoring experience, mentioning this in your cover letter can be a great way to let employers know you have strong leadership, listening, and goal-setting skills.

Be specific about who you mentored and what career goals you helped them to achieve. Explaining how this mentoring relationship resulted in a tangible benefit for the company will also show employers what an asset you could be.

Your experience doesn’t have to be a formal mentoring arrangement to count as mentoring experience. If you took a new hire under your wing or trained new employees, these are great examples of mentoring.

Here’s an example of a paragraph in a cover letter that describes a candidate’s mentoring experience:

As a software developer, I've mentored several junior team members, helping them develop their skills and achieve their goals. I guided one new hire through mastering a specific programming language, which resulted in an 8% reduction in development time. I also coached a team member in developing their time management skills, they went on to earn a project management certification and received a promotion. By sharing my expertise and providing guidance, I've helped my mentees grow professionally and contributed to the team's success.

2. Demonstrate Your Mentoring Hard and Soft Skills

Being a great mentor requires a robust set of skills. Here are some of the key mentoring skills to include in your cover letter:

Key Mentoring Soft Skills

Soft skills are the personality traits and qualities that determine how you interact with those around you and how you approach tasks. To be a great mentor, you need to have a strong set of soft skills to offer understanding and effective guidance to your mentee.

Here are some essential soft skills to highlight in your cover letter:

• Active listening
• Verbal communication
• Interpersonal skills
• Empathy
• Emotional intelligence
• Problem solving
• Analytical skills
• Leadership
• Offering constructive feedback
• Encouragement
• Idea exchange
• Curiosity
• Positivity
• Observation
• Reliability
• Relationship building
• Networking
• Coaching
• Planning
• Goal-setting
• Following through

Key Mentoring Hard Skills

Your mentoring hard skills are the ones you’ve gained through experience or training. Hard skills can make you a better mentor in terms of how you operate and what knowledge you have to offer.

Here are some key mentoring hard skills for your cover letter:

• Industry knowledge
• Coaching platforms
• Project management methods (Agile, Kanban, Scrum)
• Knowledge of career resources
• Video conferencing (Zoom, Hangouts)
• Remote communication

Your mentoring skills will make you a more attractive candidate to employers, but it’s not enough to simply mention them. The most effective way to highlight your mentoring skills is to demonstrate them in context.

Here’s an example of a paragraph of a cover letter that demonstrates a candidate’s active listening skills in the context of their mentoring experience:

As an experienced mentor, I understand that active listening is not just about hearing words but also understanding the emotions and motivations behind them. By actively listening to my mentees, I am able to identify their concerns, goals, and strengths, and provide tailored guidance to help them grow and achieve their full potential. In my previous role as a mentor at [Previous Company Name], I implemented active listening as a foundational skill, and it has helped me to build strong and trusting relationships with my mentees.

If you’re applying for work in a new industry or changing careers, mentoring skills are perfect to highlight because they’re extremely versatile and make great transferable skills.

3. Showcase the Results You Helped Achieve

When it comes to showing employers that you’re a great mentor, you should include the positive outcomes of your mentoring relationship. Let employers know how you set goals together, how you helped your mentee stay on track to reaching their goals, and what they achieved as a result.

Here’s an example of a cover letter paragraph that describes the professional accomplishments brought about through a candidate’s mentoring experience:

As a mentor at Bright Minds Consulting, I worked closely with a team member who was struggling to improve their presentation skills. Together, we identified areas for improvement and created a plan to help them develop those skills. We held regular practice sessions and I provided constructive feedback, which helped them to improve their public speaking skills significantly. I was thrilled when my mentee delivered a successful presentation at a company-wide event, which was praised by the executive leadership team. It was incredibly gratifying to see my mentee’s hard work and dedication pay off, and to know that I had played a key role in helping them achieve this significant milestone.

While it seems natural to focus on the results earned by the mentee, don’t forget to include your own mentoring goals you reached. Employers will be interested to know how these experiences have shaped you professionally as well as the team members you’ve mentored.

Here’s an example paragraph where the candidate highlights their own goal achievement as a mentor:

As a mentor at Innovative Solutions Inc., I set a personal goal to gain new perspectives on the company and its culture. I intentionally sought out mentees from different departments and backgrounds, with the aim of broadening my understanding of the organisation as a whole. Through my interactions with my mentees, I gained valuable insights into how different teams operate, their challenges and opportunities, and the overall company culture. I was also able to share my own experiences and perspectives, which helped to foster greater collaboration and understanding between teams. This experience not only helped me to grow as a mentor but also as a professional, and I am eager to bring this same open-minded and collaborative approach to my next mentoring opportunity.

Focusing on the results you achieved through mentoring will show employers that you’re a motivated candidate who follows through on the goals they set. When it’s clear that you will bring a tangible benefit to an employer’s company, they’ll be much more likely to see you as a serious contender.

Author Bio

Corissa Joy Peterson is a Content Writer and Resume Expert at Resume Genius, where she loves equipping others with the tools they need to pursue their dreams. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in Philosophy and a certificate in Peace and Conflict Studies.