I’ve always been (pleasantly) surprised to hear from students that

A common worry is switching to industry means that it’ll be hard to find & have mentors outside of academia

It’s been a pleasant surprise because it really highlights how much mentorship and human social relationships are critical and very positive aspects of academia—also because it’s an easily solvable worry.

In my experience, people are always busy, but most are happy to mentor if they know that you are open to and seeking it. There are some ways to make it a little easier to develop these relationships:

  • be open that you are seeking mentorship — you don’t need to directly say “Hi, I’m looking for mentorship”. Usually it’s enough to ask people about their career trajectories, describe aspects of your current position you’re seeking feedback on, keep people posted about your career development, etc.
  • make it convenient for them to meet with you — in my company, slack is the default communication channel. Moreover, it’s commonplace to add meetings events to people’s calendars. So I’ll ask: “Hi! May I pop time in our calendars for me to ask for some career advice?” or “Hi! I’d love to catch up and hear how things have been on your side. I’d also love to run some ideas by you that I’ve been noodling on and hear your feedback. I put some time on our calendars, but feel free to move it to a better time that works for you!”
  • keep them posted on your career progress — mentors love to hear about any wins that you’ve experience, especially if they helped you along any aspect of your trajectory into the company that you’re both at

In my career, I’ve also found it powerful to maintain relationship mentors outside my company (from people who have moved to new companies) and outside my direct team and organization. Quite possibly, I consider myself to have more mentors now that I’m outside of academia now. The Grad Advisors were incredible mentors. But because things are more socially egalitarian in industry (at least, to me), I find that I have more opportunities for mentorship. Admittedly, people tend to have more time in industry than busy teaching professors. All to say, there are kind people both inside and outside of academia.

Also don’t underestimate the mentorship that you can receive from peers in your team and among collaborators! Academia has a lovely built-in mentorship structure, where we often consider mentors to be those in academic roles more advanced than us — i.e., having more experience. In industry, your peers will have more experience in many different ways and will have very insightful knowledge that you can learn from.

AI was not used to write, edit, or brainstorm this post. All mistakes and em dashes are my own.