Having a Mentor at a Young Age Boosts Career Success

Researchers from the North Carolina State University have found that young adults who have had mentors are more likely to have a financially sound and personally rewarding career.

According to the latest study, such people are also more likely to find work early in their careers that offers them more responsibility and autonomy. They based their finding on the evaluation of the data retrieved from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health that involved 12,000 people who were either in their teens or early 20's.

"We wanted to look at the long-term impacts on mentees in naturally occurring mentorship relationships, rather than participants in formal mentorship programs," said Dr. Steve McDonald, an associate professor of sociology at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work. "And we found that having a mentor provides a clear benefit well into their working lives."

To investigate this, the participants were interviewed on whether they had any mentor. After six years, they again surveyed the same young people and enquired about their work.  But, their evaluation was not just limited to comparing the numbers from the surveys. They noticed that young people coming from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds were more likely to report having mentors.

McDonald said, "We wanted to find a way to determine which professional benefits stem from mentorship, as opposed to benefits that came from socioeconomic advantages."

This was done using a model that compared those from nearly identical backgrounds, where the difference was on whether they had a mentor or not, after which they evaluated the results of the groups i.e. how well they did in the job market.

Though no much difference existed in the overall employment and compensation, they noticed that having mentors at younger age had boosted their career as they had greater intrinsic job rewards, like authority and autonomy.

"The findings imply that mentees learn to place a higher value on jobs with more intrinsic rewards - and those same characteristics are associated with long-term career success," McDonald said.

The finding was published in the American Journal of Community.