Mentors are often people who are eager to pass on their knowledge

How to Get a Job You'll Love, 2005/2006 edition

You want to be better at your job. You want to develop your relationships at work. And you're keen to make your way up the career ladder. It sounds as if you're in the market for a mentor.

Mentoring is so popular that many companies organise their own schemes and if you haven't signed up yet you could be missing out. The chance to develop your career with a helping hand from someone who has been there and done it is increasingly being seen as the fast track to success. You, the mentee, get to focus on your progress, while your mentor passes on the sort of advice that only comes with a lifetime's hard work and mistake making.

"Mentors are for anyone who wants to move onwards and upwards." says John Lees, career coach and author of How to Get a Job You'll Love. "For example, they allow you to get an independent, objective view of how your organisation sees you and that is something you rarely get from managers or colleagues."

Mentors are often people who are eager to pass on their knowledge of their chosen industry. Many companies set up schemes because they don't want individuals to retire without bestowing their wisdom onto their more junior colleagues. It places mentees in a strong position, giving them an insight into their career and company that their counterparts may never have.

"Most people are motivated by the chance to pass on their expertise," says John Lees. "Even if your company doesn't have a formal mentoring scheme ask that one is set up or even set one up yourself. Find out who would like to get involved, get their responses to it and go from there."

The best mentoring schemes are those that are voluntary and informal, allowing the mentors and mentees to develop a relationship that suits the way they work and the goals that they want to achieve. If a mentee wants nothing more than to develop their communication skills, this will require a different partnership to that where a mentee wants to chase after the MD's job. So, if a mentoring relationship is to work out, partners need to share some common ground.

Matching can be based on gender, ethnicity and age or technical ability, subject specialities and even similar experience. It is also important that both the mentors and mentees know what they are letting themselves in for.

"It is important to talk to two or three potential mentors and find out the one that suits you the best," says John Lees. "They have to be honest and supportive of you but you also have to be honest about what you want to achieve. There is a high degree of confidentiality in mentoring and that is why the right relationship is so vital."

It also has to withstand stressful situations, career changes, unwieldy workloads and lack of time. According to John Lees, mentoring partnerships should start by focusing on short term goals before moving towards more long term aims which can take up to two years to achieve.

But before you rush off and enlist the help of your office role model, you have to be clear about what you want from the mentoring relationship. What sort of person would you feel at ease with? What aspects of your career do you want to develop? Do you have a career change or promotion as a goal?

"This is why you should set up a programme of development," says John Lees. "Look at things like job performance and relationships at work. Then move into career development, adapting to change or even getting involved in other aspects of the organisation's work. Both of you need to know where you are going. Then it's just a case of making the changes that will lead you both to success."