Find Yourself a Mentor or Let One Find You, by Clementine de Montille

FIND YOURSELF A MENTOR OR LET ONE FIND YOU

A mentor is someone who support and encourage you to develop your skills, set up your own business, and help you to be successful. The relationship between a mentor and a mentee can be very helpful for both sides. This day we had the opportunity to come to the Swissotel to participate at the Speed Mentoring event, organized by the Business Journals.

[photos coming soon]

7 am in the morning, we were ready to meet some mentors!   Valerie Beck, our teacher was one of the 40 mentors who are the most influential women in the community. The mentors were sitting around the tables and the mentees had to move tables every 7 minutes when the bell rings! Personally, I had the chance to meet 5 different mentors.

It was fast, but it’s a way to be efficient, precise and synthetic. It was interesting to have their personal advises and to see that everyone has different insights! One of the talk I had who touch me was especially with Tamara Jurgenson. She is responsible for e-commerce, and integrated marketing. She told me the best advice she could give me is to follow my passion. In fact, she started to work in Finance with General electric and now she is in Marketing. When she wakes up in the morning, she’s completely blossom. She had a great position in the marketing department particularly thanks to word of mouth from one of her mentor. That’s why she told me how networking is important, because we never know where it can lead. I really enjoyed participate to this event because I find it motivating to meet successful women. It made me want to set up my project and find a mentor who could be a guide to help me to find the right direction to develop my career. 

After this exciting event, we went to the John Hancock building where me met the Associate Sales Manager Christopher Rondeau.  He works for the company 36O Chicago.

In this company, many people are in charge to go around the world to look at existing observatory to take over in order to make something different. Christopher Rondeau gave us such useful advises! In order to be promoted in a company we have to perform in different field, be on time for every job, even if we have our birthday party! As he said, people remember if you are punctual or not. It shows if you are a professional. In addition, he pointed that everyone is on social media, and that we should not be friend with co-workers. We have to think that what we are doing right now is going to influence what we going to be in few years. We have to be aware, take orders, and be professional. Important aspects to consider are how we look, and how we present ourselves. If we apply for a job, we need to be prepared. We must know all the stuff we can have about the company, about our previous employees in order to looks likes ready to be hire!  We can loose interview in one question if we are not prepared!  We have to pay attention that everyone me meet now can be useful in our professional career. He told us that competition is everywhere, and now it’s an international competition. From the top of the Hancock Tower, we had right angles on that whole Chicago. The sight we had was a great metaphor to see above, and achieve our goals successfully.

Then, we visited Google Company where we met Megan Danielson. She is in charge of the marketing department in the travel industry. She explained us that Google is constantly in search of innovation. Google has various applications such as YouTube, Google maps, translator that allows us to improve and make our life easier. Google loves to be concentrate on things that matter. The company is able to make projections in the future. Google has about 40 000 employees operating in 70 different offices. Google wants to operate worldwide and one of it goals is to buy Internet in the entire world.

Innovate faster, improve our life, and make it easy to help million of people is Google’s mission! Some of the favorite aspects of Google is mentorship opportunities. Google push employees, and help them to develop their personal skills. When someone starts to work for Google, they can have a mentor.

Google’s design is created in order to allow staff to meet colleagues from other department. As an example, in the cafeteria there are long table to allow people to eat with coworkers they may don’t know. Megan told us that we could ask people to be our mentor. However, we have to come with points we want them to help us. We have to be proactive. As she said, ” You own your own career”, so we should know our goals.

Another important point Megan told us is about volunteering. Google chose for one-week employees who want to go and help children, or animals, a cause they care about. They also make donations to a cause, it’s a part of the Google’s culture. Volunteering give us prospective and allows us to be able to understand the outside world. As an example, they gave money to an incubator, which help people who don’t have the fund to start their project. Incubator allows people to growth the ideas. Google allows employees to dedicate 20 % of their time for personal project.

 It’s one day of their week where they can spend time for their personal life. Google allows employees to be people, and happy employees are beneficial because it makes the company successful.

After we ate at Lyfe Kitchen where we had the chance to heard our guest speaker Gisele. She was born in Vietnam, she has been living in France, and when she did an internship when she had the same age of us, she stayed in Chicago!  She explained us how networking is important. We have to find characteristic we want to show. In her case, the interesting facts she values are her ability to speak different languages. She pointed out the value of networking, we have to think about some characteristics we want to share. How can we inspire someone who will hire us?
From today, I noticed that networking is really common in France. It’s less usual to give our business card in France ! This is why if we meet someone, we can take his card but then we have to follow up. Volunteering is to do a mission we care about. From her experience, she loves architecture and she decided to spend her free time once a month to give a tour in Chicago. It’s an additional value. In the USA, it’s deeply ingrained in life and culture. It makes the difference between two resumes. That’s why we have to find what move and inspire us. I’m found of art and fashion, that’s why I should ask to be volunteer for an organization specializes in this industry. It’s a way to share your talents for what’s you’re passionate about!  Then, she talked about mentoring. For her, it’s someone who looks at you, who show you the path you should follow. It’s an innovator, who is going to inspire you.


To splendidly end, we had the chance to meet Peeter Rios, who is the owner and the executive pastry chef. He is a graduate of Kendall College! We tasted macaron assortment while he was telling us how he did to achieve his goals!

From this day, I learned how it’s important to network. It made me want to be more proactive in my business life and exploit opportunities and having the courage to see plans and projects through to completion. Thanks to all the people I had the chance to met, I understood that a mentoring support is important to almost everyone!