Your first decade in any industry will come with a lot of challenges. From trying to find your footing, building the right relationships for growth and understanding the culture of the industry, it won’t be long before you realize you need a mentor!

Mentoring is crucial in the professional world. Thankfully, there are hundreds of mentoring programmes in Canada for professionals in various fields and careers. What they do is match you with an accomplished professional for a one-on-one, career-specific, mentoring relationship.

This is needed to help you grow and build the important professional connections and learn the corporate culture, as well as gain insights about the labour market, as it affects your profession. The good thing is, you don’t even need to have a job before you take advantage of mentoring programs.

There are several mentoring programs in Canada. One good example is the TRIEC Mentorship Partnership that offers mentorship to residents in Toronto. Data have shown that more than 75% of its mentees find jobs related to their field within the first six months after the programme.

The Canada World Youth is another platform for mentorship in the country. You can look up these two or do a quick search for mentorship programmes in Canada specific to your field.