Launched in October 2020, the Quantcast Mentorship Program was developed to help our employees get more support to develop their skills, learn from mentors, and have access to executives who paved the way and now have successful careers.
Since then we’ve received applications from employees across the globe and have paired them with mentors endorsed by Quantcast’s leadership team. The program runs every six months and invites employees, both mentors and proteges, to learn from each other and grow their skills. The mentors coach, guide, and challenge proteges to go the extra mile and get clarity on what’s important to them and why. The proteges self-reflect, embrace stretching their comfort zone, and come with an open mind to learn and thrive in their careers.
We’ve asked three of the proteges who took part in the program to share what they learned and how to best partner with a mentor. We hope this offers some inspiration to others to reach out and find a mentor who can help you further develop your career.
Josh Behr
Josh has been with Quantcast for 10 years now and is based in our San Francisco office. His current role is head of Technical Client Services. He joined the Mentorship Program with the goal of progressing in his career and developing relationships with new people within Quantcast.
What advice would you give to other proteges about how to best work with a mentor?
Be vulnerable, open-minded, and open to new ideas or making yourself uncomfortable. Give your mentor your full attention and act on the advice you are receiving from them. Do your homework.
What’s the best advice you received?
It wasn’t anything I didn’t know already, but it was to be proactive in getting what you want for yourself and your career. It is so easy to get bogged down in the minutia of the day-to-day that you forget to take a step back and advocate for yourself. Having a mentor forced me to take that step back and look at the bigger picture.
How did this experience accelerate your learning and professional development?
The mentor sessions pushed me to have career conversations with my boss, which made them realize I was serious about progressing in my career. Those conversations didn’t linearly help me make progress but did improve my relationship with them and keep me in consideration for future opportunities, which have since paid off. It made me uncomfortable at first but I truly feel that being vulnerable in my mentor sessions allowed me to figure out what I wanted and for my mentor to give me advice that really resonated with me and worked!
Rachael Cohen
Rachael has worked at Quantcast for three and a half years. She is now a sales manager working out of our San Francisco office. She joined the Mentorship Program with the goal of becoming a manager.
What advice would you give to other proteges about how to best work with a mentor?
Come to your mentor with a career goal in mind and don’t be afraid to share anything that you think may be holding you back from achieving that goal. Your mentor has likely experienced the same challenges and uncertainties that you may be facing and can help you talk through solutions and visualize a path forward.
What’s the best advice you received?
Rather than one specific piece of advice, my mentor gave me a completely new mindset! When I started working with her, I was too focused on what I felt I wasn’t doing enough of and how that might affect how I was seen by others. My mentor advised that instead of doing more, I needed to amplify and refine what I was already doing. Working with my mentor helped me understand the ways in which I could go beyond simply helping others and gain visibility for myself and all that I was already doing to support my team.
How did this experience accelerate your learning and professional development?
Working with my mentor allowed me to interview for, and ultimately accept, a management position with confidence. Learning from my mentor’s past experiences helped me realize that we all approach career development from unique perspectives; however, feeling inadequate at some point along the way is almost universal. My mentor was deeply empathetic in providing me personalized support and I strive to use the approach she modeled with the team that I now manage.
Shane O’Brien
Shane is an account manager at the Dublin Quantcast office. He has been at Quantcast for almost three years. He joined the Mentorship Program with the goal of becoming a key account manager.
What advice would you give to other proteges about how to best work with a mentor?
Don’t be afraid to give real examples of what you need help with. The mentor is there to help you with real-life situations as well as sharing some of their own. This is crucial to understanding and utilizing their advice.
What’s the best advice you received?
Realize you have come further than you think and start looking at long-term goals (five-year plan) rather than just short-term goals (one-year plan).
How did this experience accelerate your learning and professional development?
This gave me more confidence in my strengths whilst reinforcing that it is okay not to know or be great at everything.
Learn more
Check out these tips for career development or read our two-part series on preparing to be a manager by building your toolbelt and developing emotional intelligence.