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Woman Engineer Magazine, launched in 1979, is a career-guidance and recruitment magazine offered at no charge to qualified women engineering, computer science and information technology students & professionals seeking employment and advancement opportunities in their careers.

This magazine reaches students and professional women engineers nationwide at their home addresses, colleges and universities, and chapters of student and professional organizations.

If you are a woman engineering student or professional, Woman Engineer is available to you FREE!


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 Only the Good Peer Mentor Young

 
In the traditional mentor-mentee relationship, the mentor helps her young protégé to develop certain skills, to understand workplace issues, and to cultivate a useful network of contacts.
 
“Searching for a mentor has be - come the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming,” says Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Young (people) are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after.”
 
Inherent in this sentiment is the sense that having a mentor at the top of the tree when you’re trying to get a foothold on the bottom branch is, well, a bit like getting a leg up on your competition. That’s where the traditional notion of mentoring has fallen into disrepute. Today’s young professionals, who grew up networking every single day across social media, are fully aware that it takes two to create productive, useful relationships.
 
Enter peer mentoring, a more balanced and fluid relationship than that of old. Peer mentors are on a similar level at work, facing the same challenges, learning how to deal with office politics and trying to plant the seeds of a successful career that will span decades.
 
There’s no one who will under stand your worries and issues the way a peer mentor can – and vice versa. In this relationship, you’re both teacher and student – you’ll give advice, of course, but you can also get great advice from someone who is, if not exactly walking in your shoes, then shoes that look and feel a lot like yours.
 
Striking up a peer mentorship when you’re at the beginning of your career can be a hugely beneficial move. You’ll always have a sounding board, a safe place to vent, and, if you’re really lucky, an ally who’ll be with you all the way. Of course, that’s not to say there will never be tricky moments between peer mentors – there will, for sure, be times of challenge and disagreement. That’s why getting some ground rules in place is a great place to start.
 
Peer Mentoring 101
• Set up some ground rules about confidentiality – this should be a safe space
• Agree how you’d like to communicate, including how often, and stick to it
• Commit to both giving feedback, and receiving it
• Be open to impromptu mentoring sessions as situations arise
 
With peer mentoring, you’re not trying to take a short cut. You’re not trying to circumvent years of building your own knowledge and relationships by getting access to someone else’s hard-won network. There really is no substitute for doing the hard work yourself. If you don’t, what kind of credibility will you hold when you’re the CEO?
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