Want to make sure a hiring manager reads your résumé? A good first step is to type it in a legible, professional-looking font. You might be the perfect candidate, but employers will never know it if they can't even make out the text on your application.
"Since a prospective employer is looking at the résumé for only [a few] seconds, you want [a font] that is aesthetically pleasing and grabs the employer's attention at a quick glance," said Wendi Weiner, a certified professional résumé writer and founder of The Writing Guru. "The résumé should be sophisticated in design with clear headings that stand out."
There are hundreds of different fonts available, so picking one for your résumé can be a difficult process. Though there are several different font families, most job seekers go with serif — a stylized font with tails and other decorative markings, like Times New Roman — or sans-serif, a simpler, no-frills font like Arial. A Weemss infographic on the psychology of fonts said that serif typefaces are associated with being reliable, impressive, respectable, authoritative and traditional, while sans-serif fonts are seen as universal, clean, modern, objective and stable.
No matter which font family you choose, your résumé typeface should be easy on the eyes and show up well both in print and on a screen, regardless of size or formatting. It's also a good idea to choose a standard, universal font that works on any computer's operating system, as your résumé will also likely be scanned by automated applicant tracking software.
According to résumé and career experts around the Web, here are the best font choices for job seekers, and the kind of message each one sends to potential employers.
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Arial. If you want to use a sans-serif font, Arial is one of the best options for your résumé. Barbara Safani, owner of the career management firm Career Solvers, told AOL Jobs that she likes to see the Arial font because the lines are clean and it's easy to read. Jillian Kurvers, director of content at innovation management firm Brightidea, wrote in a Creative Group blog post that some hiring managers may find Arial to be banal and unsophisticated. However, this tried-and-true classic has become a standard and is definitely a safe choice.
Calibri. As the default Microsoft Word font, Calibri is an excellent option for a safe, universally readable font. Professional résumé writer Donna Svei is a strong advocate of Calibri for résumés, noting on her blog AvidCareerist that this font is familiar to most readers and renders well on computer screens. Svei also noted that 12-point Calibri produces a "perfectly sized" two-page résumé of 550 to 750 words.
Garamond. Job seekers looking for an old-style font should consider using Garamond for their résumé. This timeless typeface conveys "a sense of fluidity and delicacy," and has "a simple elegance that looks polished in print ... or on screen," Kurvers wrote.
Georgia. If you want a traditional-looking alternative to the oft-overused Times New Roman, consider switching to the Georgia font. A Colorado Technical University infographic on Mashable recommends using Georgia because of its readability: The font was designed to be read on screens and is available on any computer.
Times New Roman. Although Times New Roman may remind some younger job seekers of their high school and college essays, this universal font remains a popular résumé choice. Marcia LaReau, founder and president of Career Strategist, wrote on Forward Motion Careers that Times New Roman will show up as clean, easy-to-read text on any computer. While this font is highly readable and safe, be aware that, like Arial, using it may be construed as boring and unimaginative, and is unlikely to stand out in a sea of résumés.
Trebuchet MS. Job seekers who want a sans-serif typeface but don't want to use Arial or Verdana can switch to Trebuchet MS. Chandlee Bryan, a certified career coach and expert for Answers.com, said Trebuchet MS is an excellent choice for those looking to set themselves apart from other candidates. Your résumé will stand out from others because it has a slightly unusual font choice, but not be so strange that it turns off potential employers, Bryan wrote on Answers.com.
Here are a few other popular résumé font choices that are clear, legible and scalable:
Serif – Bell MT, Bodoni MT, Bookman Old Style, Cambria, Goudy Old Style
Sans-serif – Century Gothic, Gill Sans MT, Lucida Sans, Tahoma, Verdana
Additional reporting by Chad Brooks, Business News Daily senior writer.
The Yoga keyboard connects to the tablet magnetically. Credit: Jeremy Lips
With a snap-on keyboard packed in, the 13-inch Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows looks like a tablet built for productivity. But, due to its lack of ports and unstable keyboard hinge, the device is hard to recommend to serious business users.
The slate has plenty of good points, including a gorgeous display, truly epic battery life and a nifty flip-out kickstand that makes it a lot more versatile than your typical tablet. But I wouldn't recommend replacing your current business laptop with the Yoga Tablet 2. For the Yoga Tablet 2's $599 asking price — or just a bit more — you can get something a lot more practical for work.
Design
The Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows shouldn't be confused with the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro, a similar 13-inch tablet with two key differences: It runs on Android instead of Windows, and has a built-in projector to beam presentations onto the nearest wall. Unfortunately, Lenovo stripped the projector out for the Windows version.
Like that device, the Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows is sure to turn heads, thanks to its distinctive design that includes a large, cylindrical battery along one edge. The asymmetrical, imbalanced design can feel a bit awkward when you're holding up the tablet, but the cylinder does give you something to hold. Plus, the tablet's textured plastic back makes it easy to grip. I also like the metal hinge and edging, which give the device a premium feel.
This Lenovo slate is one of the heaviest tablets on the market. The device weighs a whopping 2.27 lbs. alone, and the keyboard adds even more weight. It's quite a bit heavier than other large tablets, such as the 12.2-inch Galaxy Note Pro (1.6 lbs.) and the 12-inch Surface Pro 3 (1.8 lbs.). The slate is also really big, measuring 13.1 x 8.8 x 0.1-0.5 inches, compared to the Surface Pro 3's 11.5 x 7.93 x 0.36 inches. If you want a tablet that's easy to carry with you on your daily commute, this isn't it.
Kickstand
The battery cylinder along the Yoga Tablet 2's bottom edge hides a flip-out kickstand, which opens with the press of a button on the slate's backside. The kickstand props up the device while you're using it with the included keyboard, just as you'd use a regular laptop.
Well, at least in theory, it does. In practice, however, the Yoga Tablet 2 feels more than a little unstable when balanced in my lap. It's top-heavy, and the light keyboard and small kickstand just don't provide enough stability; I was constantly worried that the device was going to break apart and tumble to the floor. If you want a hybrid laptop you can actually use in your lap, even infrequently, the Yoga Tablet 2 is a poor choice.
The kickstand also has a few other uses that don't involve the keyboard. If you flip it out and lay the tablet on your desk, it props up one end of the device by a few inches, providing a pretty good angle for typing on the touch-screen keyboard. This feature might sound like a gimmick, but I found it to be seriously useful.
You can also use a hole in the kickstand to hang the tablet on any hook. I'm not sure how useful that feature really is, but it could come in handy for showing a presentation to a small group.
Keyboard
The keyboard feels great, thanks to its well-spaced, full-size keys that provide good feedback when pressed. The keys also have a decent amount of travel, so extended typing sessions are relatively comfortable, and the touchpad is generously sized and responsive. Plus, the accessory is extremely thin and light, without feeling flimsy.
However, the design of the hinge threatens to spoil the whole experience. The keyboard attaches to the bottom of the tablet via a magnetic flap, which is similar to the way the Surface Pro 3 connects to its keyboard. Unfortunately, the Lenovo used weak magnets, and didn't include any guides to keep the keyboard attached and lined up. During my testing time, it was constantly slipping off and becoming misaligned. My biggest issue was trying to pry open the pair, which usually caused the keyboard to become detached and slide onto the desk, keys down.
Ports and connectivity
The other big factor that makes it hard to call the Yoga Tablet 2 a true laptop replacement is the lack of even a single full-size USB port. Instead, you get a single micro USB port, a mini HDMI port and a microSD card slot.
Sure, you can buy an adapter to link regular USB accessories — like a mouse, flash drive or external hard drive — to the micro USB port. But the fact that this single port is also the charging port cripples your ability to link basic accessories without even more dongles and adapters.
I do appreciate the mini HDMI port, though; it's something you don't see on many tablets. The port makes it easy to link the slate to a large TV, monitor or projector for work presentations.
Display
For a laptop computer, I've always thought that a 13-inch screen strikes the best balance between portability and productivity. Smaller displays can make multitasking difficult, and bigger displays are too bulky to carry with you.
That holds true for the Yoga Tablet 2's 13.3-inch touch-screen display, which feels roomy even when you're multitasking. Editing a spreadsheet in Excel certainly feels much more comfortable than on the smaller 10-inch model. Plus, the display is sharp, with a quad-HD resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. Text looks crisp and readable, and you can fit a lot of content on-screen at once.
The slate's 16:9 aspect ratio makes the screen feel awkwardly narrow when you're holding the device in portrait mode. It works fine for a laptop, but for a tablet, I much prefer the wider 3:2 aspect ratio of the Surface Pro 3, or the extra-wide 4:3 ratio of the iPad Air 2.
Battery life
If there's one good reason to choose the Yoga Tablet 2 over other devices, it's battery life. The slate ran for an incredible 12 hours and 59 minutes, making it one of the longest-lasting tablets we've ever tested. Only the LG G Pad 10.1 lasted longer (13:55), while the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 HD+ ran for just about as long (13:01). That's a big plus for people who need a device that can last through the end of the workday and beyond.
Stylus support
Lenovo's slate comes with neither a stylus nor a pressure-sensitive display. If you want to take notes or draw diagrams directly on your tablet's display, the Surface Pro 3 or Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 — both of which come with a pen and digitizer-enhanced display — are better options.
Performance
The Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows provides pretty good performance for basic business tasks like checking email and editing documents, thought it can sometimes feel sluggish while multitasking. The slate runs on a 1.86-GHz Intel Atom Processor with 4GB of RAM.
On the Geekbench 3 test, which measures overall performance, the Yoga Tablet 2 scored 2,540. That's a bit better than the tablet average of 2,375, but not great for a work machine. In comparison, the $575 Acer Switch 11 (Intel Core i3 processor and 4GB of RAM) scored 3,459, and the $699 Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi (Intel Core M processor and 4GB of RAM) scored 5,742. On the more premium end, our $1,299 Surface Pro 3 review unit (Intel Core i5-4300U processor and 8GB of RAM) scored 5,665.
The Yoga also really struggled on our OpenOffice test, which tasked the machine with matching 20,000 names and addresses. Lenovo's tablet took 21 minutes to finish, which is more than twice as long as the Switch 11 and five times as long as the Surface Pro 3, which finished in an impressive 4 minutes and 43 seconds.
Pricing
The Yoga Tablet 2 might seem affordable compared to competing machines; its $599 price tag is a full $200 lower than that of the cheapest Surface Pro 3, and that's before you buy the Surface's $129 keyboard, which is sold separately. But I actually consider the Yoga to be somewhat pricey for the hardware you get.
For example, the 11.6-inch Asus Transformer Book T200 can be had for just $460. It offers slightly better performance, plus a ton of ports, including two full-size USB ports and an Ethernet port. Then, there's the 13.3-inch, $699 Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi, which doesn't have more ports than the Yoga does but offers much better performance and comes with a much more stable keyboard dock. It's a bit more expensive but a lot more capable of handling a heavy workload.
If you don't really need a detachable display, Asus' ZenBook UX305 is an excellent, affordable option. The superthin 13.3-inch Ultrabook starts at just $699.
Bottom line
At a glance, Lenovo's 13-inch Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows has a lot going for it. You get a big, beautiful display, a handy kickstand and truly epic battery life.
Unfortunately, the awkwardly designed keyboard hinge, the lack of a full-size USB port and middling performance make it a subpar work machine. If you must have a detachable hybrid, there are more capable machines in its price range. It might be worth a purchase for those with only basic computing needs, but most business users should skip it.
What do most successful businesses have in common?
Using available resources to effectively execute business strategies, maintaining a strong focus on the customer and structuring the organization in order to support company objectives are the three basic building blocks that high-performing organizations, regardless of industry or geography, have in common. That finding comes from new research by The Conference Board, an independent business membership and research association.
To better understand what traits link the best businesses, researchers identified 56 companies that rank highly in leadership, financial performance and people management. Those companies include FedEx, Coca-Cola, Target and American Express. The study's authors then surveyed 76 executives at 27 of those companies to learn how their businesses are run.
Amy Lui Abel, managing director of human capital research at The Conference Board and a co-author of the study, said that when looking from the outside, it may seem as if these companies don't share much in common.
"However, our survey of executives at those four high-performing organizations, and 23 others, revealed a layer of meaningful commonality underlying their success," Abel said in a statement. "While the DNA of every high-performance culture is unique, they rest on a common catalog of 'genetic' elements that proactive leaders will identify, adapt and incorporate into their own company's identity."
Based on their surveys, researchers uncovered three common "DNA elements" and the strategies involved in each:
Use resources effectively and efficiently to execute business strategies
Create a culture of rigor and standards for financial stability
Require process around fiscal management, oversight and decision making
Execute strategies in an operationally efficient manner
Align organizational structure to support business strategy
Create and maintain a culture of accountability
Strong customer focus
Delivery high-quality products and services
Create a strong customer-centric culture
Focus the organization's process and products on customer needs
Organizational capability to support critical business objectives
Attract and retain talent through strong brand reputation
Provide learning and development opportunities to all employees
Require supervisors to set clear goals and manage performance
Raise employee engagement to drive productivity
Develop a global mindset among leaders
Align rewards and recognition to support business strategy
Help managers create effective teams
"In today's globalized, competitive environment, a huge array of measures — from market capitalization to employee-engagement scores — is available to evaluate a company's success," said Rebecca Ray, executive vice president of knowledge organization for The Conference Board and a co-author of the report. "But such numbers alone reveal little about how an organization succeeds, or fails, in adapting to change, developing new capabilities and executing its long-term strategy."
The study was also co-authored by Amanda Popiela, a research assistant in human capital at The Conference Board.
The Latitude 7350 is too large and bulky to be used primarily as a tablet. Credit: Jeremy Lips
You won't find many devices quite like this one. The Latitude 7350 is one of the biggest detachable laptops out there, combining a whopping 13-inch tablet with a snap-on keyboard dock. You also get a sharp, bright display; snappy performance; and long battery life.
But due to its relatively large size and weight, this isn't the device for someone who wants a tablet first. Instead, it's for business users who want a solid 13-inch notebook with a screen that can detach occasionally, whether it's for digital note taking with Dell's optional stylus, or maybe just to watch Netflix after work. If that's what you want out of your next work laptop, the Latitude 7350 is your best bet.
But think hard about how much you want that detachable screen. When combined with the keyboard, the Latitude is thicker and heftier than some more traditional notebooks that have similar specs, including several hybrid models with screens that fold backward 180 degrees instead of detaching.
Design
If you didn't know any better, you wouldn't realize that the Latitude 7350 was a hybrid at all. When docked with its keyboard, the Latitude looks like any other slim laptop, and that's a good thing. The machine's matte plastic design is understated but attractive, and metal trim adds a touch of sophistication.
The 13-inch display, while a great size for a laptop screen, makes for a really hefty tablet. Alone, the slate weighs a whopping 2.05 lbs. For context, that's more than twice as much as the 9.7-inch, 0.96-lb. iPad Air 2, and even significantly more than the 12.2-inch, 1.75-lb. Surface Pro 3. Unless you're using the Latitude as part of your workout routine, you won't want to hold this device aloft for long, even without the keyboard attached.
Snapping on the keyboard makes the Latitude even heftier, as it comes in at 3.73 lbs. Since there aren't many 13-inch detachables to compare this device to, let's see how it stacks up to folding hybrids in its size range. The featherweight Yoga 3 Pro is one of the lightest of these hybrids, weighing just 2.62 lbs. The HP Spectre X360 is also lighter than the keyboard-equipped Latitude, weighing 3.17 lbs. Both the Yoga and Spectre have specs and prices in the same ballpark as the Latitude.
When combined with its keyboard, the Latitude is also bit chunky, measuring 0.79 inches thick. The Yoga 3 Pro is just a half-inch thick, while the Spectre X360 measures 0.63 inches. The Surface Pro 3, which has the most powerful processor among these machines, is also very thin with its cover attached: just 0.56 inches, thanks to its super-thin keyboard cover.
Don't get me wrong — the Latitude 7350 is still extremely thin and light for a 13-inch laptop. But if you're going to pay this much for your next work machine, there are more portable options out there. That's something to consider if you plan on lugging the device around on your daily commute.
Display
Other 13-inch laptops boast much higher resolutions, but the Latitude's 1080p display is more than adequate for a machine of this size. It's on par with the HP Spectre X360, which also sports a 13.3-inch, 1,920 x 1,080-pixel screen. Most importantly, the Latitude's screen renders sharp, readable text, and images are bright, with good contrast and color accuracy.
Some competing machines push more pixels. The Yoga 3 Pro has a 13.3-inch, 3,200 x 1,800-pixel screen, while the Surface Pro 3 sports an impressive 2,160 x 1,440 pixels. On the other hand, the Latitude's native 1080p resolution makes it more likely to play nicely with your desktop monitor if you plan on docking the laptop to your desktop.
It's also pretty bright, with a max brightness of about 309 nits. That beats out the category average of 255 nits, making the Latitude 7350 easier to use outdoors or in direct sunlight.
Keyboard
Compared to most flimsy tablet keyboards, the Latitude's snap-on deck feels sturdy and luxurious. Pairing the tablet with the keyboard could be easier, since it requires you to blindly align three connector pins with the bottom of the tablet. Once they're connected, though, opening the tablet lid feels buttery smooth. Disconnecting the tablet is as easy as sliding a small button on the side of the hinge.
The keys themselves are well-spaced and offer good feedback when pressed. They also provide a good amount of travel, which is a big plus; deeper keys are more comfortable for extended typing sessions. The generous wrist wrests are another perk. Plus, you can turn on a backlight for the keys to keep working in dim lighting. Overall, the Latitude's keyboard is a winner.
It also includes a large, responsive touchpad. Mousing around feels precise, and gestures like two-finger scrolling work well. There are no discrete buttons, but the pad delivers satisfying clicks when pressed.
Viewing angles
Like other hybrids of its kind, the Latitude is top-heavy; most of the weight is in the tablet portion, not the keyboard. As a result, you can't tip the Latitude's display back quite as far as you can on a traditional laptop, or else it would tip over. When connected to the keyboard, the Latitude's screen can be opened about 40 degrees past the straight up-and-down position.
When using the device in your lap, you might occasionally wish that you could tilt the display back just a little farther, but overall it's not a big issue. And it's a lot more generous that the 15 degrees of freedom afforded by Dell's smaller hybrid, the Venue 11 Pro, which is practically unusable in your lap. Plus, the Latitude's gorgeous IPS display provides wide viewing angles, so colors don't get washed out when viewing the screen from above or to the side.
Ports
The Latitude tablet itself offers only a charging port and headphone jack, but the keyboard dock adds all the ports you'd expect from a basic notebook. That includes a pair of USB 3.0 ports for connecting accessories like a mouse or external hard drive, a Mini DisplayPort connector for linking your device to a larger monitor and a full-size SD card slot for expanding the tablet's storage.
There's no Ethernet port, which might be an issue if your company's network security policy requires a wired Internet connection, though not many convertible notebooks offer that option. You can buy a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, if you don't mind it hogging one of your two USB slots.
BUY Dell Latitude 7350 >>>
Stylus support
One of the best reasons to own a hybrid like this, as opposed to a traditional laptop computer, is so you can pair the laptop with a stylus to take notes right on the screen. Digital note-taking apps like OneNote and Evernote are great because they save your notes to the cloud, so they're backed up and accessible on any device.
The Latitude 7350 doesn't come with a stylus or a pressure-sensitive display, but Dell does sell an active stylus separately. Dell's stylus works pretty well for basic note taking. It has a pressure-sensitive tip, an important feature to make digital handwriting feel accurate and natural. But note taking with this Dell doesn't feel as smooth or precise as tablets with pressure sensitivity built into the display, like the Surface Pro 3 or Lenovo ThinkPad 10. Compared to the Surface Pro 3 pen, the Dell stylus produces lines with a bit of wobble.
The Dell pen was used with the Venue 11 Pro in this comparison shot, but it should produce similar results on the Latitude.
One other point to note: The Latitude's narrow, 16:9 aspect ratio is a bit awkward for note taking. I prefer the Surface Pro 3's wider, 3:2 aspect ratio, which is closer to the dimensions of a standard sheet of paper.
Docking
While Dell offers a snap-in docking station for its Venue line of tablets, the Latitude line doesn't get that special treatment. Instead, Dell offers a dock that plugs into the Latitude 7350 via the notebook's USB 3.0 port. Regardless, the dock does add a huge array of extra ports, including two USB 2.0 ports, three USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI-out ports, one DisplayPort, an Ethernet port for wired Internet and a headphone jack. That's a lot of connectivity options, which is great for business users who want to use their devices at their work desks with a larger monitor (or three) and peripherals like a desktop keyboard, mouse or external hard drive.
Performance
Our Latitude 7350 review unit is powered by Intel's Core M-5Y10c processor, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of solid-state drive (SSD) storage. The Core M processor provides good performance without the need for a loud, spinning fan inside, but it's not as powerful as Intel's Core i-series chips.
Still, Core M gives the Latitude 7350 good performance for everyday tasks. On the Geekbench 3 benchmark test, which measures overall performance, the Latitude scored a solid 4,541, which is higher than the 4,291 ultraportable notebook category average. The score also puts the Latitude on par with the Yoga 3 Pro (4,571). The Spectre X fared slightly better, with a score of 5,614.
The bottom line is that the Latitude 7350 provides more than enough processing power for daily business activities. During my testing time, I noticed that apps opened and closed quickly, and multitasking felt snappy. Other notebooks are better for more intensive tasks like serious photo or video editing, though.
Battery life
The Latitude's long battery life helps justify its relative heft. Dell's hybrid actually has two batteries: one inside the tablet itself and an extra battery in the keyboard. Together, they let the notebook run for 8 hours and 35 minutes, which is longer than the 7:57 average in the ultraportable category. It also far outlasted the Yoga 3 Pro (6:08). The HP Spectre x360 has better longevity, though, running for an amazing 9 hours and 28 minutes.
As a standalone tablet, the Latitude ran for just 7 hours and 10 minutes. That's less than the Surface Pro 3, which lacks a secondary battery and ran for 7:27, though it has a smaller display.
The Latitude isn't the longest-lasting hybrid out there, but its secondary battery gives it very good battery life if you plan to use the device primarily as a notebook instead of a tablet.
Pricing and configurations
The Latitude 7350 isn't cheap, starting at $1,200 with an Intel Core M-5Y10c processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD storage. You can get a slightly faster processor for $1,349, and upgrade to 8GB of RAM for $1,419. If you can afford it, I recommend going for 8GB of RAM to future-proof your machine. If you need more storage, your only option is the top-end model, with 256GB of SSD storage for $1,550.
The Yoga 3 Pro is a slightly better deal. Although it starts at $1,300, the base model comes with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The Spectre x360 starts at a significantly cheaper $900, though you'll have to spend $1,150 to upgrade to 8GB of RAM. The most comparable Surface Pro 3 model, which comes with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256 of storage, also costs $1,150.
Bottom line
The Latitude 7350 is an extremely well-rounded package. It offers most of the features you could want in a premium notebook, including a gorgeous display, long battery life and good performance for daily business tasks.
But the machine is more notebook than tablet. That's because the display, while detachable, is a bit large and bulky to carry around. But it's a great size for a laptop screen, and the ability to use it separately on occasion, especially for digital note taking, is a nice bonus.
The Latitude is pricey, though, especially if you want more memory than the baseline model offers. It's relatively heavy compared to its premium competitors. I recommend considering folding laptops like the Yoga 3 Pro or Spectre X360, since they offer a similar user experience in a lighter package. But if you really want a big detachable hybrid, Dell's Latitude 7350 offers plenty of bang for your buck.
In a traditional mentorship, there is a mentee, who is usually a new or less-seasoned worker seeking direction in his or her career, and a mentor, who is typically an older professional who imparts wisdom to the mentee based on his or her extensive experience. As a mentee, you can call on your mentor to guide you through your career challenges, help you make difficult decisions and offer advice when you're not sure which direction to take.
"A good mentor [is] an expert active listener who can give constructive but developmental feedback," said Anka Wittenberg, chief diversity and inclusion officer of enterprise software company SAP. "He can put himself [aside] and listen to the mentee. [Mentors should] have a genuine interest in the professional development of others."
Within this context, it might seem that the "student" has much more to gain than the "teacher" from the relationship. Reverse mentoring — having younger employees share their technological know-how and fresh perspective with older ones — and peer mentoring are gaining traction as ways to create more mutually beneficial mentorships, but the classic dynamic can still provide great value to the mentor's professional life. Business leaders shared the ways in which mentoring others has furthered their own career development.
Creating stronger workplace bonds. In cutthroat industries and work environments, it's easy to be skeptical of a colleague's personal motives when he or she offers you help. But in a good mentorship, there's no conflict of interest — mentees can trust that their mentors are truly looking out for them. That's why Kohsuke Kawaguchi, chief technology officer of Jenkins' business solutions provider CloudBees, believes the relationship aspect of mentoring provides such a great benefit to a mentor.
"Relationships in the workplace are often full of friction," Kawaguchi said. "Different people have different ideas about what to do, and this puts people into a frame of mind that makes it difficult to touch the person deeply. Mentorship ... has a way of removing this barrier. It lets you build a strong bond in a place where you tend to build many shallow bonds."
Ed Donner, co-founder and CEO of financial tech job search site untapt, agreed, noting that the expression, "What goes around, comes around" is especially true for business relationships.
"If you take time to help someone grow their career and achieve their aspirations, then, in addition to doing something incredibly satisfying and fulfilling, you are also building a lasting relationship that will likely benefit you both," Donner said.
Gaining the confidence to take your work in a new direction. For small business owners, succession planning can be a daunting prospect. While it can be difficult to let go of the business you created from the ground up, being a mentor to your future successor can give you the reassurance you need to start stepping back from the day-to-day operations.
"Mentoring my successor has given me the benefit of knowing the business will be in good hands," said Dave Greenhalgh, owner of Minuteman Press of Medford. "I have also been able to take a step back from the day-to-day work and focus more on our plans for the future — where we go from here, in what direction we can grow, what technological advances we can take advantage of. I like being a coach at this point in my career and am enjoying my new role while guiding [my successor] through the ins and outs of managing the business."
Remembering the value of listening. No matter their career level, all workers want to be treated with respect and feel like their voice is being heard. As individuals climb the ladder and gain more power in an organization, it becomes easier to forget what it was like at the bottom. Wittenberg noted that mentoring someone can keep your ever-important listening skills sharp — a crucial tool for making your top talent feel valued.
"Be sure to go into a mentoring relationship focusing on listening," Wittenberg told Business News Daily. "Executives ... like to share their ideas, [but] it can often come out as the mentor doing 80 percent of the talking and not even [being] aware of it. Allow the mentee to share his or her thoughts."
Assessing your own personal values and experiences. The best company cultures are led by managers and executives who are transparent, honest and practice what they preach. Eran Yaniv, CEO and founder of mobile performance testing company Perfecto Mobile, said that mentoring has given him the opportunity to hold himself accountable for the advice he gives.
"In many cases, I found myself ... trying to qualify how closely I would have behaved in the situations that I was helping to resolve," Yaniv said. [Was] the guidance I was giving truly aligned with the way I would act in that situation, or was my advice based on an improvement of my own actions and the lessons that I've learned over time? More often than not, I found my advice to be a compilation of my own actions and a 'this is what I should have done' analysis."
Reflecting on your best tactics thus far. It's in a leader's best interest to know what he or she is doing right. Becoming a mentor forces you to take an objective look at what's worked for you and what hasn't, and allows you to pass that knowledge on to your mentee in a way that will benefit both of you.
"Mentoring others ... is a way to stay grounded," said Dick Stieren, owner of Window Genie of Omaha. "The mentoring process reinforces one's own beliefs, calls to mind the best practices that have propelled [your] career and keeps [you] focused. I was often promoted because I had mentored an able replacement."
However, Stieren cautioned would-be mentors to avoid trying to turn a mentee into another version of themselves.
"Mentoring is not cloning — it is an exercise in critical thinking and an analysis of what has and has not proven to be beneficial in the past," Stieren said. "[Guide mentees] to find their own way to what they can be."
