Trying to find a mentor, not a hand-holder 4

[IJustLikeScience]

I am trying to find the right kind of mentor for me, being that I am a fairly new engineer (with a pretty unusual career path already). However, I've noticed that the word "mentor" tends to be interpreted more like "caretaker", which is not what I (or most people, I presume) am looking for. I read a thread from last year (thread731-408575) about finding a mentor outside of work, and more than a few of the responses seemed to sort of say "Don't worry about it, figure it out for yourself". The OP of that thread (like me) was not looking for someone to tell him what to do at work everyday, rather someone with a good amount of industry experience that would be available to bounce some specific questions and ideas off of about career intentions.

Long story short, I'm looking for input on where to find a mentor, not a hand-holder. If you know of a good way to go about this search (or if that is you), please let me know!

Thanks, and happy posting.

 

[rotw]

Your reluctance to hand-holding hints me that it might be you are not looking for a mentor either. Otherwise go for the caretaker and "deselect" the unwanted options (consider the rest as "overlay"). Then you have a mentor re-configured for your baseline needs...

 

[wtxhorsman]

I would think to find what you are looking for you may want to run a search for people with similar career paths or roles on a professional organization you are part of. Maybe ASME, AIAA, LinkedIN or something of the sort, and that's assuming there aren't more senior individuals to discuss things with at work.

 

[Sparweb]

My first suggestion would be to make your desire known at a professional organization in your jurisdiction (as wtxhorsman already said). There may be members who are looking for mentees, and may even be some organization to help match your interests up. If you are not currently a member of such an organization, well then that would be your first step.

Secondly, if you are truly keen to figure things out for yourself, but just want to get pointed in the right direction, then you could try posting your questions on an engineering-related discussion forum. Like Eng-Tips. nudge-nudge wink-wink.


STF

 

[oldestguy]

After joining that engineering professional group, see where they have projects, sub-sections or other activities where you can volunteer to help. By being active in the organization you will develop feindships along the line and that can lead to occasional contacts from which you will gain knowledge. It all takes time.

 

[ash9144]

Yes join an engineering group of some sort. Find an engineer with experience that you can get along with and offer to buy them a beer. Presto instant mentor.

 

[KENAT]

IJustLikeScience - there was some history with the poster in that other thread and some of the responses were fine tuned to that history. Hopefully much of that wouldn't apply to you so I would take anything from that thread with a big pinch of salt.

That said, kudos for using the search function to find another relevant thread, too many new members & first time posters don't.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​