Top tips for networking and mentoring
Top tips for building your network and creating a productive mentoring relationship
In August 2021, we interviewed Abby Whitnall, Associate Scientist at GSK to find out more about her top tips for building your network and creating a productive mentoring relationship, having worked with several mentors since the start of her career. No one in Abby’s family is a scientist: ‘only my nan had come from a professional background really’, so she has had the experience of building up a professional network from scratch and her tips for this will all be ones which don’t rely on having pre-existing wealthy or influential connections.
Abby’s tips for building your network:
‘Don’t ask, don’t get!’- be that person who, when senior company members are walking around, says ‘oh, should we grab a coffee and chat about this and that?’
Join an employee resource group because they provide ‘a community to be a part of’ where you can ‘network with like-minded people’ who will be likely to understand the struggles you have to overcome in your career and so will know best how to support you.
‘Get yourself and your work known by taking up opportunities to present your work to an audience (people can’t be a part of your network if they don’t know who you are and what it is you do)’. This ‘can be quite daunting’ so it may be worth practising presenting your work in ‘environments you feel more comfortable in’
Abby’s tips for building a productive mentoring relationship:
‘It’s give and take … You're both real human beings. And you need to have the understanding about what you can both learn from each other … My current mentor and I, we hold each other up in difficult times. And that's really important.’
‘Have very specific goals’ so that you know when you’ve ‘exhausted that professional relationship’
Your mentor must be someone ‘that you can talk to honestly’.
Embark on mentoring relationships not just with people who have experienced similar struggles, but also with people who are different from you, ‘whether that’s difference in sexuality, gender, ethnicity, socio economic status’, as this is a key way to achieve ‘radical workplace change’