Our previous post discussed how having a mentor is crucial today, and we listed five benefits of getting one. Here, we’ll focus on highlighting all the reasons why you should become a mentor if you already haven’t.

 

Mentor and Mentee

Again, to summarise, a mentor acts as an advisor to a less experienced individual, known as their mentee. At UX Tree, our Mentors are highly skilled UX designers with a minimum of three years of experience in the field, working in Senior, Lead, Manager or Director UX positions.

 

Benefits of becoming a mentor

According to Indeed, there are twelve main benefits of becoming a mentor. I’ll highlight only five which are, in my opinion, the most important:

 

1. Being a mentor builds up your leadership skills

When mentoring, you work directly with someone to guide professional development. Hopefully, your mentee will gain valuable skills or advance their career through your advice. Leadership skills are helpful because they prove you can manage others effectively toward specific goals. You can use this experience to help advance your career. In fact, 42% of our mentors got promoted in their role after starting the Mentorship Program in the first round (September 2021).

“The mentorship program was a wonderful opportunity for both myself and my mentee. While the specific task of the program was to create a UX case study, I was able to get to know my mentee of the past few months and work out their career goals and hopefully set them on the right path in UX. I also got to work on honing more of my leadership skills along the way. ” – Eoin Smith

 

2. Being a mentor boosts interpersonal skills

Your interactions with a mentee offer numerous opportunities to practice and build communication skills, active listening, empathy and patience. Communication is especially essential to mentorship, as you may meet regularly to discuss the mentee’s goals, ideas or concerns and provide instructions or advice. Beyond mentorship, having strong interpersonal skills can help you develop relationships and collaborate more effectively.

“The UX mentorship program will bring a mentor close to someone (re)starting their career now. I remembered the difficulties of getting the first UX job. It helped me empathise and, in a way, challenge/question/refresh my way of thinking.” – Mike Markoglou

 

3. Being a mentor expands your network

Networking can only help your career, as these connections can lead to professional and advancement opportunities. UX community is always a good place to meet people. Also, when you introduce your mentee to contacts to help them build their network, they may also have relevant or exciting connections to share with you.

“I can personally say that, since I’m mentoring at UX Tree, I’ve met dozens of amazing designers I learned a lot from. The community might not be big yet, but people here are very kind, the vibe is good and everyone is always happy to help. Mentor meetups, above all, are vey cool and insightful” – Katarina Hrgovic

 

4. Being a mentor strengthens your knowledge

When working with a mentee, you share relevant knowledge gained through your career or experiences. You advise them or demonstrate how to perform specific tasks such as prototyping, creating a survey, conducting usability testing. You may teach them skills you no longer use regularly, so this practice can help you rebuild or strengthen them.

“The UX Tree Mentorship Program helped me a lot. It made me open my previous research, study again to be prepared for any questions my Mentee would have and observed how the other Mentees worked through the process. I was so impressed of the other Mentees’s UX research, procedure and design!!” – Mary Ioannou

 

5. Being a mentor can help you receive recognition

If your mentee becomes successful, it can demonstrate your value to others. Part of their success is due to your guidance, which can help your colleagues and peers recognise the skills and knowledge you offer. Other people may show interest in collaborating with you or asking for your mentorship. Beyond making you feel accomplished, this positive reputation or praise could also help lead you to more career opportunities.

“After finishing up with the first round of the Mentorship Programme, I got recognised and reached out by many recruiters. I literally received few job offers every week. My mentee Feargal landed a job even before he submitted his final case study. There are plenty of opportunities for both, and hiring managers seemed to be very curios when seeing mentoring in my LinkedIn experience.” – Valentina Antunovic

 

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When I started mentoring in 2020, I didn’t expect this mentoring fever to take me so far to create the brand new UX Tree Mentorship Program. I’ve done it mainly because I saw tremendous benefits for both Mentors and Mentees. I got promoted in my job thanks to mentoring. I learned many things, starting from giving constructive feedback, leading people towards their goals, organising work, and improving my soft skills – communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills.

Now, when I have the experience of being a mentor in my CV, I dare to say that every UX designer should do the same if they want to get promoted in their career. Become a mentor with UX Tree and improve your soft skills by mentoring in our four-month Mentorship Programme.