Engineers with little on-the-job experience are faced with a stark choice: sink or swim. Experience, by definition, takes years to develop. But not if you have a mentor—perhaps a knowledgeable older professional, a hotshot designer, or a dapper young academic to whom you can turn to for advice. This is where the IEEE Mentoring Connection comes in. The program connects young professionals and recent grads with IEEE members willing to devote time to guide them in their professional development.
How helpful can a mentor be? You judge by some of the questions and answers that have passed between mentors and protégés in the program:

Q: I am due for my first performance review. How should I approach it?
A: Prepare an outline of your projects or a list of your job responsibilities that you handled during the year, and their results—including good and bad. Be prepared to explain how the projects progressed. If you were the project leader, have budget numbers and, if possible, final figures to validate expenses and back up the decisions you made.

Q: I have so many priorities on my desk that I don’t know which to tackle first. How do I manage this?
A: Don’t think you have to do everything by yourself. Ask your supervisor for help. Make a list of your responsibilities and priorities, and ask for help in deciding which are most important, based upon your supervisor’s and your group’s goals.

Q: As a team leader, I get criticized on how I handle the team when meetings don’t produce actions toward reaching our goals. How do I handle this? Am I running the meetings poorly?
A: Learn from the negative feedback. Focus on the comments, and use them to help you achieve your goals. Try to understand why you were criticized. For the next meeting, prepare a detailed agenda—and stick to it.

Q: My senior manager told me that our company is going to be reorganized and that my department will be affected. How do I help my group prepare for this kind of change?
A: Set up a meeting with your group to discuss the changes as soon as you receive them. See to it that your people learn the news from you, not from their coworkers or through the grapevine.

Q: When is the right time to consider going to graduate school? Should I go after I’ve been working for a couple of years?
A: First, work on a career plan and set goals for one, two, and five years out. Based on that, consider what you need to accomplish and whether graduate school can help you get there.

Participation in the IEEE Mentoring Connection is open to all higher-grade members. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/mentoring.