Author Archives: Simon

If you have the opportunity to work with a business mentor then I would grab it with both hands. Some people get offered a mentor as part of a training or back to work program they are taking part in whereas others actually pay people to mentor them. A mentor can be extremely helpful to your and the way in which you can run your business or progress up through the company you are employed by.

To get the most out of your mentoring sessions, both parties must be fully committed and actively involved.  When starting out be sure to have clear, defined goals in mind. When you have goals in place, be sure to revisit them from time to time to check that you are making progress.

Be sure to discuss exactly what you want from the mentoring, should it be advice on how to build up customer relations ships, advice on industry specifics over an over of business in general.

When I was at secondary school, I got offered the opportunity to go on work experience. At the time I did not really take it seriously and just looked at it as a few weeks away from school. Since leaving school and starting work I do now realise why work experience is so important. It gives students the opportunity to experience a working day in a environment that they may want to work in when older. Ideally chose a placement that you could imagine applying for a job in once you are ready to work. Once you are on your work placement, be sure to gain as much information as you can, do not be afraid to ask questions and even to spend a bit of your lunch break or after work chatting to other members of staff to get their feedback on what they think of the job.

As a teacher, time management is vital to allow you to organise work loads and ensure that all topics are covered in the detail they need to be. Teaching is not just about turning up at 8.30 and leaving at 3.30 to teach a class, there is a lot of preparation work that needs to be done and then marking and evaluating afterwards.

Most teachers start their day at about 8am and often do not leave the school until about 5.30, but when they get home their job doesn’t finish there. Each lesson have to be planned and work set for the ability groups within the classroom, this may also require additional resources such as materials or worksheets to be created. Once the work has been completed, it must be marked and possibly revisited if the students have not achieved the level needed. All of this requires accurate time management to allow you to get it done in the set time frames. Creating a diary system or work schedule is a good way of ensuing you have enough time to complete everything.

When starting a new job it can be hard to ask for help. You may feel that you do not want to give the impression that you do not know what you are doing, or it could be that you don’t have the relevant people around to ask. Not asking for help when you need it can be dangerous as people often guess what they should do and end up getting it wrong which can have consequences for the them and also the company and / or client.

There is a line between using your common sense or making an informed design and asking for too much help. You need to be able to look at the task in hand and think why you cannot do it. If it is something to do with software that you are unfamiliar with, or procedures that differ from company to company, then no one would question you asking for help as long as you learn from it each time.