Mentoring, the horsesmouth way.

horsesmouth is where social networking meets social enterprise; where personal contributions create public value; where human capital is unlocked to create social capital. It’s social networking with a purpose. We call it the wisdomocracy. Because it’s free, it’s accessible to all (as long as you’re over 16!) and because it’s anonymous, you can share from the heart. 

What can mentoring do?
Adam attends Alcoholics Anonymous, Bilal runs a business, Chris studies chemistry at college and Diane lives with diabetes. What do they all have in common? They could all share the lessons they’ve learned from experience with fellow horsesmouth members facing the same situation.  If you have successfully faced an important choice, challenge or change in your life – and who hasn’t – you could help people by signing up to be a mentor. And if you’re going through something, getting over something or simply want to get on with something – there’s probably someone out there who’s been in your shoes. Everyone has something to give and gain. That’s why we like to call it the wisdomocracy.

What’s in it for you?
Drawing on your life experiences to help others is rewarding and allows you to breathe the heady air of the moral high ground. But think about it – it’s just like eBay – all that stuff you’ve got locked up in your head that you rarely think about and that no-one really benefits from can now be unlocked and shared with people who will really value it. In short – this is an easy and fun way to give something back. Or if you’re a younger mentor it can be very helpful in building the kind of skills that employers love – listening, problem-solving and learning from experience.  And if you’re competitive – or think you have an aptitude for it – our MFactor rating system allows you to build your reputation as a mentor – which in some way, some day you may well be able to take to the bank.

What’s in it for our community?
Communicating with someone who has been in your shoes can be really helpful, no matter who or where you are. While it may not substitute for professional advice, family or friends, sometimes it’s exactly what you need. But often social, geographic, physical and emotional barriers can make it hard to find that someone. horsesmouth breaks down those barriers to access and allows people all over the UK to come together anonymously and confidentially, to share their life experiences.

As one of our mentors Tom38 says, ‘I remember coming home from work late one night a couple of years ago. I bumped into my neighbour who was also late home. I’d not really spoken to him before, but at 10pm in the dark we stood and talked for half an hour about how things were going, and about life. It turned out we’d both recently lost a parent. He said to me, ‘Everyone has their crosses to bear, it’s how you carry them that counts’. That phrase really stuck with me and it came from someone I didn’t really know.’

‘Life can be tough and it’s not always easy to get advice from someone you know already. I’d like to help in any way I can. I’m 38, old enough to have some good experience of life, but also young enough to feel connected to younger people looking for some advice. I’m a good listener and want to help anyone I can move in the right direction. Mentoring is a great thing and this site is a great idea.’

So what are you waiting for? Sign up to start mentoring today! Or, to benefit from the wisdom of someone who’s going through the same thing as you, why not search for a mentor, or post a request for a mentor? It could be the first step towards changing your life.

Ask an apprentice!

As National Apprentices Week progresses, it has been great to see apprenticeships and the opportunities they offer being brought into full focus. As young people make decisions about their future – whether to continue in full-time education, or enter the employment market – it is crucial to understand the full range of options available.

Apprenticeships offer a practical, paid way to gain experience in almost every industry, whilst continuing learning – either on the job, via training, or studying concurrently.  As Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out in a blog on Huffington Post this week, ‘For far too long academic subjects have been elevated above practical learning and these rigorous, well-respected qualifications – equivalent to a traditional degree – are going to help end that imbalance.’

What is crucially important, whilst making big decisions about whether an apprenticeship is the right option, is to be well supported and informed about which path to go down. Peer mentoring offers an excellent first-hand, informal channel for potential apprentices to ask someone who has already been there, done that, ‘Is this right for me?’

Our mentors are current and former apprentices, volunteering their time to offer advice to those considering apprenticeships, often because they received excellent advice themselves and want to give something back. They are on-hand to offer advice and support to you if you are wondering how apprenticeships work, whether they are the right option for you, if you can study while you work, and other practical tips such as how to apply.

Free, anonymous, and easy to contact online, in partnership with the National Apprenticeships Service, they will give you the insider low-down on whether an apprenticeship is right for you.

With exciting opportunities being announced every day, from Barclays to the BBC, and new funding for businesses to take on apprentices, there’s no better time to ask an apprentice!  Browse our apprenticeship mentor profiles and get on track to your apprenticeship today.

Mentor Mondays.

It’s National Apprenticeship Week! Through our partnership with the National Apprenticeship Service, we provide a place for those completing an apprenticeship, or wondering whether an apprenticeship could be a good place to kickstart their career, to connect with their peers for advice, support and useful tips.

Our peer mentors can help give you informal support and practical guidance during your apprenticeship. You may want to turn to a mentor if you’re having to make a difficult decision, or just to get support from someone who has ‘been there, done that’. 

You can talk to the apprenticeship mentors anonymously, at a time that is convenient for you. All interaction is moderated, so safe and secure.

If you are looking for a job that enables you to carry on learning, or are already in employment and want to gain further qualifications, you should consider an apprenticeship. 

Our apprenticeship mentors are perfectly placed to help you decide if an apprenticeship is the right option for you. They come from a range of sectors and organisations – including advanced manufacturing, digital economy and creative industries, business and professional services, energy and environment, construction, life sciences and engineering – so can advise you on a particular course or industry or help you with general issues. They have volunteered their time to offer advice based on their own experiences.

We’ve made it easy for you to find mentors in a particular sector so that you can talk to someone who has the most relevant experience for you.

Read more about horsesmouth’s partnership with the National Apprenticeship Service and browse mentor profiles here.

Keep up to date on the latest apprenticeship news on Twitter by following the hashtag #NAW2012.

Follow horsesmouth on Twitter as we introduce inspiring apprentice peer mentors during #NAW2012.

Read the basics about becoming an apprentice here.

Mentor Mondays

Recommendations to promote growth in the creative industries were approved by the government last week. A report by Skillset to the Creative Industries Council found that the way in which the creative industries sector is structured – a prevalence of SMEs and micro-enterprises, freelancers and project-based work – has led to an under-investment in developing skills, fewer training opportunities and a lack of structured career progression.

Among the recommendations was the creation of an online professional learning network for employers and individuals, and establishing virtual boards of experienced professionals to provide support and guidance to start-ups and small creative companies.

With 45,000 registered members, horsesmouth is emblematic of a successful and growing culture of online resource and skill-sharing. In the creative industries we have mentors specialising in graphic design, TV, music, photography and almost any other specialism you can think of; offering to share their experience and knowledge, to enable others to grow and enhance their own experience.

One of our 4Talent mentors explains her motivation to mentor:

‘Since joining the big, wide world of work I’ve been really lucky to have met a number of people who’ve helped me, with advice and support, and buckets of encouragement. It’s been invaluable, and is one of the reasons I’m where I am today. This kind of practical advice and support is free to give; it’s these little things that can make the difference between feeling a bit lost and intimidated, and being confident that you know who you are, where you are and where you’re going.’

Read the full set of recommendations from the Skillset report here.

Trip to the Top, with MT Rainey

We hope you don’t mind if we shout out about a BBC Radio programme, Trip to the Top,  broadcast yesterday, featuring our founder MT Rainey. Covering her personal life and career, it spans her journey from convent school in Scotland, to forging a path in the male-dominated world of advertising; a career that took her from London to San Francisco, where she worked with Steve Jobs on the Apple account.

From there, she came back to London, co-founded a successful top agency of her own, then took a surprising left-turn to where she is today; founder and Chief Executive of horsesmouth, the not-for-profit social network you know and (hopefully) love, with the very real social purpose to connect people online, free of charge and safely, to share wisdom and ideas.

You can hear the radio interveiw in full here for a limited time, but below are excerpts of what MT had to say. As a mentor herself, it is the perfect illustration of the stories, experience and wealth of knowledge you can access on horsesmouth — and how that knowledge could help you along your own path.

On being poached to work in the US

‘At this point I was just really enjoying my job and my life. I thought I’d found the dream job; I absolutely loved my career, I loved the industry I was in, I was fascinated by it, I worked incredibly hard, really enjoyed it and I could see that I was making good progress and I was making a good contribution. So I was excited about my career. I got this call – I’m so lucky looking back on it to have been found, and I don’t quite know how they found me – inviting me to go to America to work for what was at the time a not very well-known but quite trendy and very groovy agency called Chiat/Day, based on the west coast of America; which again was unheard of because the big advertising behemoths were in New York and Chicago.’

‘So this was already a slightly avante garde proposition. They were managing a lot of the very nascent Silicon Valley brands which are now so famous: Intel, Ashton-Tate, but most famously, Apple. So really, what they needed was someone to go and bring account planning, which was my discipline; what I did, which was bringing more sensitive consumer research to bear to the advertising process but still keeping it fairly objective. They wanted to put that into this wild and woolly west of technology advertising that was just starting to happen with these big brands, so I went to work on Apple when I was 26 and worked with Steve Jobs in 1983.’

On working with Steve Jobs

‘I thought he was wonderful; I was inspired by him. He was frightening as a client but inspiring, he pushed you to the edge, he always knew a great idea. He always knew a not very good idea as well, so he would push you to do something better. He could be argued with, if you had a good enough argument. He couldn’t be argued with if you tried to marshal lots of statistics or lots of evidentiary stuff, but if you could argue from your heart and if  you could argue with lots of conviction, he could be argued with.’

‘I did do that and he inspired me to do that even more because he was a man of conviction and instinct. He made a very big impression on me; I liked him very much.’

On working in the US advertising industry

‘In the case of Apple, the slightly reassuring thing was that Steve Jobs was exactly the same age as me, but in general I was working with mostly men, mostly older men, in a country I’d never even visited before I went to work there; on the West Coast of that country, so not even in the mainstream, in a business that is and was very competitive.’

‘However it was an industry that was really growing fast and really going places and it was very exciting; there was lots going on. Americans at the time were stymied with quite old-fashioned ways of thinking about the consumer and quite old fashioned forms of market research. People always think America led the world in advertising because it had all the huge marketing clout and had all the big international brands but in fact in the 1970s, American marketing and advertising became bogged down by market research… lots of big formal mechanistic proecdures for trying to measure advertising and its effect.’

‘There was a whole school of thought which our agency Chiat/Day and inspired clients like Steve Jobs believed in, which was that you can’t test creativity; you can’t test product creativity or commercial creativity or advertising creativity in that way, you have to find different ways of doing it.’

On setting up horsesmouth 

‘I was really inspired by the development of the new social media, which in 2005 was very nascent. eBay was the big one, and I could see how people could trade with other people and thought, if people can can create a market and value out of stuff they’ve got lying around in their attic and garage, and if other people value that thing they don’t care about any more – it’s useful to somebody else and they can create a functional transactional marketplace for that – then surely we can do that online with all the wasted wisdom that we’ve got locked up in our hearts and in our heads.’

‘It’s a not-for-profit company, it’s got an intrinsically social purpose; my idea is that we all have something to give from the lessons we’ve learnt fro life. In my case I’ve been a mentor in my life and I like to think that I still am, but I can multiply the ability to do that online, by having short, directed conversations with people who might be interested in finding out what it’s like to start a business, what it’s like to work in advertising.’

‘There are lots of other things in my personal life that I feel I can talk to people about. Online it transforms our ability to do that. We all have a set of those experiences and we all do want to give something back.’

‘The main ways that people use horsesmouth are for career guidance, employability, living with health conditions, people caring for parents with Alzheimers, single mothers, domestic violence… all kinds of issues. The wonderful thing about the internet is that through search you can very quickly go from a very wide group of people to the one or two people that are going to be relevant to you.’

With thanks to BBC Radio.

This one’s for the ladies

With figures released today showing that unemployment amongst women is at its highest since 1987, we’re having something of an impromptu ladies day here at horsesmouth.

Amongst other dismaying indicators, the figures showed that 1.128m women are currently unemployed, with more than a quarter of women having been out of work for more than a year. With the ongoing cuts in public sector funding and prohibitively high childcare costs, the outlook is that it is going to get worse before it gets better.

Of course, this is where mentoring comes into its own. With experienced horsesmouth mentors offering free advice across the board on issues such as how to apply for jobs successfully, returning to work after having children, and how to set up business; now more than ever is the time to sign up and forge some mentoring relationships. (Or, if you can, share your wisdom with those who need it.)

Take horsesmouth mentor sdoca. Offering mentoring on how to find a job and how to ace job interviews, she is now a successful web officer, having spent years looking for the right role. She says, ‘I know what it’s like to job hunt. I also helped a few people improving their CV and interview approach and find a job.’

‘I moved to the UK in 2001 and had 1- 3 job interviews per week for about 6 years until my permanent current role. This gave me a strong experience in job interview and the employment world. I have had several jobs and learnt what company are looking for, being a temp or on contracts.’

Another mentor, mumselfemp, returned to work part-time after her second child and found that she faced new challenges; of how you are perceived at work and how your goals as a mother conflict with work objectives. She says, ‘Acknowledging that change and what it means for your future can be stressful, especially as your day does not end when you finish work for the day or at the close of that last call at night. I feel this time in a parent’s career is critical to ensuring their happiness and I feel I could be useful to someone experiencing this challenge’.

Julierose  mentors for our partner Yell. On being a working mother she says, ‘Looking for the perfect balance? Impossible, stop searching. I’ve learnt as a full time working mother you should put extra effort into your time management skills – plus get recipes for 10 minute nutritious meals!’

‘It’s very difficult working and being a mother, but it’s achievable and rewarding. Guilt? Once you deal with issues of guilt – like not being able to pick your child up from school everyday, or join in each week’s sharing assembly – then you will find your own, calm equilibrium.’

Finally, BizOwner, a mentor with our partner everywoman, who champion and support women setting up business. ‘Since starting my own business I have had so many people give me guidance and advice, I understand how valuable it is to get another opinion. You don’t have to act on it but often it helps in seeing thing in a different way and that’s all you need sometimes to navigate your way around something.’

‘I couldn’t have got to where I am without being able to call on some more experienced people than me when I wasn’t sure what to do next. I believe in paying it forward. What use is experience and good advice if they’re kept to yourself? Pass them on, they don’t have an expiry date.’

If these stories inspire you, take the first step towards starting a mentor relationship today. It could provide the invaluable support, advice and inspiration you need to make that step towards achieving your goal; be it to get back to work, to change your career direction, or to start beating your own path in business.

Mentor Mondays

Welcome to our first Mentor Monday of the New Year! If you started 2012 determined to get yourself onto a new career path, this could be the mentor for you – especially if you’re looking to get into the creative industries! Don’t forget, get your requests in quickly if you want to approach this mentor for advice – first come, first served!

Tell us about yourself

As the Head of HR for Channel 4, I am kept pretty busy working closely with everyone across the organisation on anything from coaching and career advice to supporting people to develop their skills. I’ve worked in HR for over 10 years and have grafted my way up with some blood, sweat and tears along the way. When I’m not HR’ing I’m renovating my flat, which is an ongoing project. I secretly have started to enjoy gardening – not sure when that happened! I have a large shoe collection and the loudest sneeze in Channel 4. I am originally from the North but after graduating and traveling settled in London, where I’ve been ever since. I live with my husband and our 2 cats, who keep us amused with their antics.

How I can help you?

Getting a job
Interview and CV advice, networking and how to sell yourself in a tough market. I’ve had lots of experience over the years of recruitment and interview techniques.

What’s next?
Stuck about where your career is going? Not sure what’s next? It can be helpful to explore this with someone and brainstorm what your next career move be and how you might be able to add to your skills. Or, if you’ve just lost your job, how you can re-position yourself and secure a new position. Maybe you want to consider a career change but not sure how to kick start it?

Change at work
There’s lots happening. Is where you work changing and you’re finding it difficult? It can help to talk this through and consider the impact and options available. I have worked on a large number of change projects within companies and can share some insights with you

Why mentor on horsesmouth?

This is a great way to support people in developing their careers and skills. Balancing life is tough so if this can be made easier through initiatives like horsesmouth then I am fully supportive. It’s a great tool to come into contact with people who I may not have the opportunity to and increase networks and contacts. I do want to give something back as you sometimes forget how tough it is to get someone to give you a chance, open doors and develop. I got some fantastic support from friends when I first started my career and not everyone has that. Even an opportunity to listen can help someone to find a way forward.

Describe yourself in 3 words

Creative, fun, inquisitive.