Technicians: Professional Development through Mentorship

By Rachel Simmons, CPhT, CSPT
General Manager, Stanley Specialty Pharmacy, Charlotte, N.C.

Mentors play a crucial role in career advancement by offering guidance, encouragement, advocacy, and networking potential. Identifying the right mentor within your industry is essential. Your mentor must be someone you feel comfortable with and who has navigated a similar career path. Establishing a relationship with a mentor ensures you have a reliable source of support and advice throughout your professional journey. All emerging professionals should seek a mentorship relationship.

A mentor offers personalized advice and guidance, helping you to identify and pursue career-advancing opportunities. Whether you aim to find a mentor or become one, understanding the benefits of this relationship is invaluable.

A mentor serves as an advisor/coach to less experienced professionals, offering expertise and insight from a more seasoned perspective. A mentor provides advice, support, and answers to questions while safeguarding the mentee’s interests. Mentees gain valuable learning opportunities, while mentors benefit from their role as a trusted advisor.

Mentors offer multifaceted support to their mentees. They can provide tangible benefits, such as acting as a reference or forwarding a mentee’s resume to a prospective employer. Additionally, mentors provide valuable professional advice on career advancement, resume enhancement, and interview preparation. 

There are various types of mentors:

• Peer mentors, who are professional colleagues offering advice. 
• Career mentors, who tend to be in a higher position than their mentees and serve as career advocates and guides. 
• Life mentors, who are typically in the senior stages of their career and may work within or outside of the mentee’s current company. Life mentors can offer advice during difficult career decisions, such as helping mentees decide to leave a job or change careers to find a new position. They are also a valuable source of confidential and unbiased information and perspective.

Having started my career as a pharmacy technician and progressed into various leadership positions, I serve as both a mentor and mentee. I began my journey as a young professional mentee, gradually acquiring knowledge and experience over the years, enabling me to transition into a mentor role for others. Over the course of my career, my objective has remained constant: to continuously acquire knowledge and insights for personal development, always with the intention of sharing this wealth of experience with others.

Through the establishment of a mentorship relationship, individuals can access new opportunities, navigate and conquer challenges, and ultimately attain lasting success.

If I have achieved this, you can too!