What are the essential qualities and characteristics of an academic mentor? And why people prefer SkillPal?

Sayantan Chatterjee
3 min readNov 25, 2020

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Choosing the right subject after the common courseware is over is a difficult matter. Someone wants to choose science and some commerce. But your capability and skill don’t help you at the right time. So here comes SkillPal mentorship platform. You can choose the right mentor who may tell you what would be good for you. Choose someone who you admire. Do they have similar values to you? Try to have several conversations with them to confirm the qualities you are looking for. You might find that you have little in common, risking an unsuccessful partnership. What you need to do is be specific about what you want to achieve from investing your time in a mentor relationship. It takes time to develop a trusting relationship, but you need to be able to trust that your mentor is as committed to developing this partnership as you are.

A mentor in your institution should be able to get to know your strengths and help to increase your confidence. Someone who is productive will more likely be well connected. You may find that an experienced researcher can tell you about new opportunities and introduce you to their network. They should be able to point you to interesting people to talk to and involve you in scholarly debates. You can also expect a mentor to share their institutional knowledge with you, which should help to fast track your career development. The study you are working on will need specific skills at different stages so you might want to prioritise skill development before these stages. You might focus first on discipline content knowledge, or skills needed to undertake the research.

Once you have identified your skill gaps, you can fill these with more than one mentor. You can have more than one mentor if you keep those mentors at an informal level. You can find and nurture a mentor relationship outside of your academic institution. A mentor is very important in every field of life. The more you give importance to a mentor the more you are close to success. A mentor will give you the education of the past. The mistakes will not repeat again by the mentee. The best platform to get a perfect mentor is SkillPal. A mentor may share with a mentee or protege information about his or her own career path, as well as provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modelling. A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, developing contacts, and identifying resources. SkillPal is the best platform for getting a perfect mentor. Good mentors of SkillPal have not only a willingness but a keen desire to share this information. They possess empathy and understand what it was like to be just starting out in their career or field. This drives them to pay it forward, so to speak, through mentorship.

What makes a good mentor?

• A desire to help others succeed
• A willingness to pass along information
• A willingness to give and receive feedback
• A desire to work with others
• A desire to engage with others on an interpersonal level
• A desire to learn
• A motivation to mentor
• Good listening and communication skills
• Good questioning skills
• Good common sense
• Good people management and leadership skills
• Knowledge of the industry, organization, or field in which the mentee works or aspires to work in
• Self-confidence and self-awareness
• Strong ethics
• Lack of prejudice
• Openness, honesty and trustworthiness
• Patience
• Empathy

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Sayantan Chatterjee
Sayantan Chatterjee

Written by Sayantan Chatterjee

I completed 10th from The Scottish Church Collegiate School. I got certified from NIIT in the track BSIM. Completed MBA from ICFAI University.

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