This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
James: Hello and welcome to Graduate Theory. On today’s episode, we speak all about mentoring.
We spoke about mental health and how it works in with hustle culture and how those things can coexist and how to really look after your mental health, how to make sure you look after other people’s mental health.
I think this is a really important episode. Given that we cover some themes around mental health, if you have any concerns or want to reach out to people, there are links in the show notes so you can find out more if you need to. We’re speaking about important topics, so I hope you enjoy.
Intro#
James: Hello and welcome to Graduate Theory. On today’s episode, we have not one but two guests. Both guests are working on a project called MentorFold, where they aim to connect up-and-coming graduates with early-career mentors. My first guest studied IT and finished his degree in 2016. He previously worked at Apple and PwC.
He now works as a technical trainer at Microsoft and is passionate about mental health. Please welcome to the show Aiden. My second guest today studied commerce at university. He’s worked in many roles in Australia and throughout Southeast Asia in investing, business development and communications.
He’s now an editor at Newsweek. Please welcome to the show Eric.
What was the inspiration behind MentorFold?#
James: My first question for you both is about MentorFold. You’re trying to connect mentors and mentees, but what was the reason and inspiration for starting MentorFold?
Aiden: It’s an interesting story because I’ve worked in quite a few corporate environments, such as Microsoft and PwC. One of the experiences I went through at PwC made me realise I didn’t really have anyone to turn to.
In a corporate environment, when you get a mentor, there’s generally a lot of structure around it. You go to the mentor or talk to them, and the mentor says, “Okay, this is what your career will look like at PwC. This is what you can talk about. This isn’t what you talk about.”
It’s really tied to job progression and how you’re doing. But if you have problems or issues that aren’t necessarily something you can discuss with people at work—or maybe they’re to do with work—it could be something like, “I’m thinking about moving to another job.
I’m thinking about trying a different career.” Maybe you can’t exactly ask a mentor at your job about that because they’ll say, “Why do you want to leave? What’s the rationale behind this?” The other thing that led me towards it was the end of my experience at PwC.
I wasn’t having a great time, and I thought it would be really good to talk to someone who wasn’t necessarily part of the company but from whom I could still get mentorship. That was a long time ago—about two or three years ago.
The idea for MentorFold didn’t really take shape until a couple of months ago, when I was in the shower thinking about this for some reason. I thought, “Wait a minute, I don’t think anything like this actually exists, and if it did, I would have 100 per cent used it.”
So I immediately thought, “Okay, I need to write this down, work through it and figure out what’s going on here.” I hit upon the idea of MentorFold being a platform where you connect with a mentor who isn’t tied to any job or university.
You generally get a mentor who sticks with you from career to career. From that point, it was easy because I had an idea of what it could look like, but I wanted to get some traction underneath it before I turned it into a proper startup.
I applied to the Blackbird Giants program with the idea, fully expecting not to get in because it’s a competitive process and there are a lot of very talented people in the program. Then I got in and thought, “This is crazy. How did I get in? This just doesn’t seem true.” At that point, I thought, “If I’m going to do this, I need to work with someone because I definitely can’t take it upon myself.” I reached out to Eric because we’ve known each other for over 10 years.
Eric and I have built stuff together over the past couple of years, and it was the natural inclination to say, “If I’m going to build this with someone, let me build it with someone I’ve known for so long and who I’m close to, even outside of our working relationship,” and go from there.
That’s how it got started: my personal experiences combined with a bit of luck and a bit of hard work.
James: Amazing what you can think of in the shower. Right?
Aiden: That’s my top tip for this podcast: think of things in the shower.
What are the benefits of having a mentor?#
James: Eric, what has your relationship been with mentors? Have you had one or wanted one in the past?
Eric: Both. When Aiden brought this to me, it brought up a lot of thoughts about how I’d interacted with mentors and mentorship. I’ve sought mentors out privately, and I’ve also been assigned them from a corporate perspective. One company I was working with was a large international company, and they said, “You’re starting here.
We need to assign you someone you don’t report to, so you can ask questions with less conflict and more honesty.” But, like Aiden said, after all that rhetoric, there is an underlying loyalty to the company and risks associated if you don’t follow it as a mentor or mentee.
That always seems to hamper the level of connection you can develop in that scenario. In my private life, outside the corporate sphere, I went about mentorship a little differently. I looked at who was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, maybe five or 10 years down the road from where I thought I was, and I sought them out.
I said, “I want to be doing what you’re doing. Can I learn from you if I take you out for coffee?” That has led to much more fruitful, long-standing relationships that I continue with a few individuals to this day. We’re trying to create that for everyone else because it’s been immensely helpful for both of us from a personal and professional standpoint.
James: I like that a lot. One thing that’s really cool is your initiative in reaching out to people. That’s a stopping point for many people because there’s a lot of friction. Maybe you’re sitting there in the shower.
Friction of Reaching out to Strangers#
James: Maybe you’re thinking, “Damn, I’d really like a mentor.” But then there’s this whole thing: “Who am I going to reach out to? Maybe they won’t respond.” People can talk themselves out of it or not even think it’s something they can do. That’s a great example, Eric, of using your initiative and getting out there.
Eric: It can be hard for a lot of people to reach out, and we acknowledge that. That’s part of the problem we’re trying to solve. What’s stopping you from taking the first step? Maybe you need to be introduced, don’t know how to reach out or just find it scary. Those are all valid points.
Aiden: We joke that we’re taking the friction out of reaching out to strangers because we do the reaching out for you. But it’s an important part of seeking mentorship.
You need to put yourself out there. While we can take a fair bit of that away from the conversation, you still have to say, “Okay, I want to have a conversation with my mentor or even, in some cases, my mentee.”
In order to do that, you’ve got to bare your soul a little bit and form a connection that way.
What problems do mentors solve?#
James: Say someone’s thinking about getting a mentor. What are the main things you would want them to take away from a mentoring relationship? Or, Eric, what have you taken away from those experiences?
Eric: Part of what we’re running up against in building this community is a general lack of understanding around what mentorship is. To a lot of people, it comes across as a buzzword. For our purposes, it’s a combination of guidance, mentee-driven coaching and problem-solving. Guidance is when you’re looking for direction and need someone more experienced than you to bounce thoughts off.
Mentee-driven coaching is where you say, “I have a problem or a goal. I need to figure out how to get to point B. Can you help me?” It’s not up to the mentor to drive your coaching or progress. You need to go to them as a resource, as an authority and as someone who’s more experienced. Problem-solving matters because you don’t know everything.
They’re going to have experience with problems you’ll run into in your professional life, navigating your career and even navigating the workplace when you start work. For us, it’s a combination of those three things. With that definition, that’s what we want to build.
James: I like what you said about having to know where your point B is. It’s nice to have a mentor and say, “I’ve got a mentor. I’m better than everyone,” but you need to come to the mentor knowing what you need and why you have someone there, beyond it just being cool to have someone to talk about your career with. It’s a case of, “I have you around so I can better reach this particular destination.”
Eric: If I might cut in, it’s good for the mentor as well if you come to them with a point B. If you don’t, they get frustrated: “Why am I meeting with this person? Is this a social visit? Do they want something from me? Are they trying to sell me something? What’s the purpose of this?” If you go to them and say, “This is my goal and plan.
This is the difficulty. Can I buy you a cup of coffee or have some of your time to hear about your experience or thoughts?” you can then plan out a structure for the next week, two weeks or month to see how you can get there.
Aiden: I’ve recently started to mentor people as well as be a mentee. From my perspective, the best mentor–mentee relationships have begun when people have literally DM’d me on LinkedIn and said, “Hey, I’ve seen your experience and what you’ve done.
I really want to be in that same space. Do you mind taking a couple of minutes to chat about it?” That’s always been really effective from a mentorship perspective because you think, “I’ve been in that position before. I’ve definitely been that clueless graduate thinking, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing.’”
When you get to the point where you have some experience and would really like to help others in that position, it’s a great thing because you’re passing on that knowledge. People who come after you don’t have to make the same mistakes you might have made. One interesting thing about MentorFold is that we have a lot of mentors who’ve joined the platform, and every one of them says, “We just want to help other people.” It’s not about getting paid or building a following. It’s about, “I’ve learnt all this through a lot of hard work, dedication and a ton of mistakes.
I want to make sure the people who come after me don’t have to make those same mistakes.” It’s very altruistic from that perspective.
James: There’s that idea of paying it forward. When you’re young and have received advice or had a mentor, you get that feeling: “I want to give back and give someone else the same experience I had.” I think this is really cool, and I like the idea of removing a lot of the friction from getting a mentor.
The New Job Code#
James: I want to talk about the book you’re releasing soon, which Eric mentioned before the podcast. What’s the title, and is it related to this project?
Eric: It is. It’s called The New Job Code. We’re planning to have it come out in January 2022. We’re positioning it as a guide to how the job market and the job-getting process have changed from before the pandemic to now. There are different ways to get and find jobs, as well as the online presence you need these days.
There are a whole lot of different examples. It’s separated into seven chapters, and we’ve packed it full of real-life examples and screenshots from every step of the job-getting process, including mentorship.
Aiden: It was really fun to write because we spent hours upon hours talking to each other and saying, “Hey, do you remember that time you did this or that? Why don’t we put it in the book? Why don’t we just be authentic and talk about what we did and how we got to where we are?”
We both think there’s a lot of really good information that people can take away from it.
James: Let’s say someone’s going to read this book. What are some things you want them to get out of it?
Eric: We designed this book so you can pick it up and go, “Cool. These are actions I can take that will get me results.” It’s a really short book considering how long books on this topic can get. It’s 80 pages, which isn’t a lot, and there are lots of pictures and screenshots.
It’s all really accessible, and we’ve tried to keep it that way as much as possible. Our goal is for someone to pick it up, take a look, identify with the problems we outline in the first few pages and say, “Cool, this might actually work. Let’s give this a try,” then follow the steps as they go through it.
Aiden: I think the best element is the action points at the end of each chapter. You can go to the action points and ask, “Have I done this, this, this and this?” If you work through all those different action points and get to the end of the book, you can say, “Okay, I’m in a reasonably good place. I feel like I can get a job now. I’ve been able to do this and that. I know what a résumé looks like and how to write a cover letter. I know why people write them and what their purpose is.”
You get to a really good position where you can say, “Cool. I know how to look for the right jobs and create my résumé and cover letter. I know how to behave in an interview. I even know how to negotiate a job offer.” That’s the one thing I wrote in the book and thought, “If I’d known this when I was a graduate, I probably would have been in a much better position than I was.” As I said, it’s another form of mentorship because, instead of talking to people about it, we’ve written it down and said, “Hey, take a look at this because you’re going to need it when you’re negotiating or applying for a job.”
Eric: We have a whole section on the different questions you get asked in an interview and what they look like now, as opposed to two or three years ago.
James: It’s a modern book, because some interview questions might be 20 years old and not relevant today. Are there any concepts or action items from the book that you apply in your lives now?
Aiden: There are quite a few. One I’ve been applying more recently is really plotting out your next move, how to apply for a job or how to look for the right jobs for you.
I’m not a very organised person by any means, but after writing The New Job Code, I thought, “I don’t really do this first bit. I should make a conscious effort to sit down and make lists.” My wife is fully organised, so I talked to her about it and she said, “Why don’t you make a to-do list?
Why don’t you make a pros and cons list? Why don’t you do this or that?” For the longest time, I thought, “I don’t know. That’s not really my style,” but now I’m 100 per cent on board. I was talking to Eric about this earlier and had a pros and cons list about something we were discussing. I said, “This is what this looks like.
This is what that looks like.” I have a whole mental framework around it now. I allocate points based on how important or unimportant something is to me and get a nice little score. Based on the score, I can make a decision: “Based on all the numbers I’ve put together, this is the direction I should go in, and this is the direction I shouldn’t.”
That’s been really helpful, and the whole mental model piece has been great.
James: That weighted matrix or weighted decision could probably have several different names, but it’s something I’ve used in the past without knowing it was an established tool, particularly for making big choices.
I remember considering going on exchange and whether it was a good decision. The cons were: “It’s going to cost a lot of money. I’m not going to be around. I’m going to a whole new city where I won’t know anyone.”
The pros were: “I’m going to get to travel around and meet new friends,” and things like that. You try to do it as impartially as possible. Whatever score you get at the end takes your emotion out of the decision a little.
Sometimes you can get more emotional about these decisions or find them hard to make, so having it written down in concrete can definitely make them easier. Eric, is there anything you use, or any key concepts from the book that are your favourites?
Eric: Maybe I’ve adopted some of this without knowing it because we’ve written the thing. There’s a section on networking, and networking is like a dirty word. No one likes to do it; when you think about it, you want to gag a little bit. Part of my journey has been reframing networking as providing value wherever you can. If you look at it that way, it’s not about what you can get from the person you’re talking to. Otherwise, you feel like you’re harassing them and scrounging around for a bit of their time. Instead, you’re asking, “Is there anything I can help you with? Is there a need I can see or a connection I can give you that’s going to benefit you, even if you’re the CEO of wherever?” That translates into the messages and emails you send, the proposals you make and the content you produce. It all comes together. I think that’s really important. If someone doesn’t already know that, they need to learn it because that’s how things work.
James: I’ve recently been reading a book called Give and Take by Adam Grant. It’s about the idea of being a giver versus a taker and, as you were saying, offering value to people with no expectation of them doing something in return.
I think that’s a really powerful concept. When it comes to networking, you can look at people and ask, “Where can I offer value to this person, or how can I do something for them?” and create a network that way.
Challenges Graduates Face and How to Deal with Them#
James: Let’s say someone is finishing university and starting a new job. What are some key challenges they might face? Are there concepts from the book or advice you would give them to help with those challenges?
Aiden: It’s an interesting question because what you know now isn’t the same as what you knew when you first started a job. If I were just starting out and got into PwC, I’d have said, “Go work at a Big Four.
There’s plenty of experience. You get to try different things.” But, being older and looking back at that time, I would say to anyone who’s just graduated from university, is looking for a job and hasn’t got one yet: don’t work for a big company just because you think that’s the best thing to do.
For example, the startup scene here in Melbourne is amazing now. It wasn’t that way two years ago, but after COVID, there are startups everywhere. Everyone is hiring and has all this money from the rounds they’ve raised. As someone who might be just getting into a job, you want to accelerate your growth, and you’re at an age where you can take a lot of risks. Don’t work at a big tech company, a Big Four, a big law firm or whatever it is. Work at a startup because there are fewer people, so you have more time with the people who make decisions, and you’re given more responsibility more quickly.
If you’re the kind of person who says, “I’m up for the challenge and want to take all that on,” then I’d say go for it. You’ll be in a much better position if you can make it through. I’ve heard of people who started at a startup, worked in product and became the head of product two or three years later.
If they decide to, they can then go to places like Atlassian or Canva as a senior product manager at maybe 22, 23 or 24. Meanwhile, the normal pathway to a role like that would take you until about 28 or 29, even if you were really good at your job.
My main advice for someone who’s just graduating is to think about it properly and make sure you’re making the best decision for you. Of course, if there are other things you need to consider, think about those as well. But if you can take the risks and are up for a challenge, maybe forgo working for a big company, join a startup and see what that can do for you.
Eric: I’d like to build on that in two ways because I absolutely agree. For any role, the first thing is to ask as many questions as you can when you join, while they still think you don’t know anything about the role. You won’t have that chance again because they’ll expect you to know your shit.
The second point about deciding what kind of company to join is that it’s also about knowing and figuring out your limits, which ties into mental health. If you join professional services or any Big Four, be prepared to work very long hours. If that’s the kind of work you want to do and the schedule you want to keep, fantastic.
But if you want to join somewhere more flexible, where you can help shape the culture and your role, maybe go for a smaller company.
Those considerations have been important to both of us.
James: As you were saying, Aiden, the startup scene across Australia is becoming much larger and creating more opportunities. If you’re graduating, maybe you think you’re talented and can get a good role somewhere, but you aren’t looking at the other side and saying, “I don’t have to work at a big, established company where I’m just in a role somewhere. I can join a startup of a few people.” As you were saying, Eric, you can really shape the company’s culture and build something there.
I also want to touch on something else.
Aiden and Eric on the Importance of Mental Health#
James: You’re both quite passionate about mental health, which you mentioned before the podcast. How did you become passionate about it? Was there any inspiration or story behind your passion in that area?
Eric: Personal experience. Mental health has always been close to my heart, and I can say the same for Aiden, through both personal experience and what we’ve seen in our peers. A mutual friend of ours passed away when we were all about 23 years old. At 23, no one knows how to handle or talk about that, so you have to figure it out as you go along. You can’t compartmentalise it; it affects everything. When those kinds of experiences stack up with stressors you acquire from the workplace, family life, personal circumstances or whatever you happen to be going through, you don’t fit the mould of what’s expected in a corporate environment. It becomes your responsibility to figure out what you can take on and set appropriate boundaries, at least in a work setting. On the personal side, that’s a whole other question you need to figure out.
Aiden: To add to that, this is a personal story. It happened back in 2016, towards the start of the year, and it’s burnt into my memory. As a 23-year-old, you go through a significant amount of change at that point in your life.
You’re on the cusp of your early twenties and mid-twenties, going from uni to a full-time job. I was in my final year of university, doing my final-year project and dealing with a lot of personal and family issues at the same time.
All those things built on each other. Then, when my friend Long passed away, it was like playing a game of Jenga. I know this is probably a bad metaphor, but it’s like playing Jenga and someone goes for the bottom piece and yanks it out.
The whole thing falls over. That’s what it felt like for a long time. Eric can attest to this as well: I went through a significant number of problems at that point. Work was stressing me out. I was working four days at Apple and spending three days at uni, so I didn’t have time to myself and had a lot of other stuff going on. All of that, combined with the trauma you go through when a close friend passes away, breaks you. You think, “What do I do now? I don’t really care about anything.
I don’t want to reach out to anyone. I just want to sit at home and do nothing.” This is why mental health is such an important topic for both of us: we know what that looks like. To be completely candid, I had anxiety then and continued to have it for quite a while afterwards.
I was diagnosed with it and took medication for it as well. We know what it’s like to be in that position and to feel a bit lost and hopeless. That’s the reason we got into mental health afterwards. We thought, “If someone else goes through something like this and you can help just one other person, you’ve brought a lot more net good into the world, haven’t you?”
You’ve helped someone dig themselves out of the kind of hole they might have settled into. That’s one reason we’re so passionate about mental health, along with friends around us going through similar issues. It’s been a very interesting experience looking at that.
Eric: There’s not a lot of space for mental health in the discourse around startups and hustle culture. You look at corporate startup accounts on Instagram or LinkedIn and everything’s shiny. Everyone wants to put their best foot forward.
These are people who go through things, and to deny that is to misrepresent the reality of what it means to work. People don’t like to talk about that.
Aiden: Exactly. This is going off on a bit of a tangent, but when you look at social media and people’s highly curated feeds, you say, “This person’s killing it. They got a job at so-and-so. This person’s killing it.
They got married, bought a car or bought a house.” But it can hide a lot of stuff that’s happened in their personal lives. I can attest to that because, if you looked at my LinkedIn while all of that was happening, you might have thought, “He’s doing this degree. He’s going to get a job here.
Everything looks pretty cool for him.” Internally, I was thinking, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m stuck. All this stuff has happened to me.” It’s something we don’t talk about a lot.
Eric: To take it back to the topic at hand, when you’re 18, 19, 20 or 21 and start a full-time job, it’s a massive period of upheaval. You go through the process: “I’ve finished uni. I’m going to get a job. Everything’s sorted. Just try to keep it together and do well at my job.” But there’s a whole other side to it.
You have to manage that personally, and navigating the change can be really hard, especially if you have other stuff going on.
James: Are there any things you’re involved with or do to continue that interest in mental health and help people as they go through the transition of starting their first job? Is there anything you do to help with that?
Aiden: At work, I’m part of what’s called the Real Mates program. It isn’t specific to Microsoft; it was developed outside Microsoft by someone who used to work there and then left to pursue it. That’s definitely something I pursue. From a personal perspective, it’s a matter of reaching out to people and having those uncomfortable conversations.
The worst that could happen is that you reach out to someone and say, “How are you actually going? Is everything okay?” They might say, “Everything’s perfectly fine. Thank you for asking.” But occasionally, one person will say, “No, everything isn’t okay. Do you mind if we talk about it for a couple of minutes?” That’s the opportunity to say, “I’m in a position where I can talk to this person and let them know about my experiences.” They’ve put themselves out there and said, “I’m willing to listen and talk.”
You might avoid a situation like what happened with one of our friends when we were 23. It’s a matter of making yourself a little uncomfortable, but you don’t know what you could do. You might end up saving a life.
Eric: That seems like a pretty stark juxtaposition to talking about how to get your first job or mentorship, but it needs to be part of the conversation.
Aiden: It does. Part of MentorFold isn’t just mentoring people through their careers; other problems also arise. One big issue that comes up when you’re looking for a job, moving to another job or unsure what’s happening is your mental health. It’s really good to be able to tell someone, “I’m struggling mentally with this decision I have to make or this thing that’s happened at work.”
Just being able to talk to someone about it means so much more than what used to happen back in the day. One thing I really love about our generation and the one that follows is that we seem more open to talking about mental health and talking to people about it.
You didn’t see this kind of thing 10 years ago, when people would say, “I’m not doing so well” or “I’m going through this.” It’s good; there’s a lot of positive change that I really enjoy.
Eric: One initiative I’ve been involved in recently is an app called Mind Care Club. It’s grown over the last year and a half around Southeast Asia, specifically in the Philippines. It’s a telehealth counselling app: counsellors register on it, and people sign up and can call someone from their phones.
I think it’s a subscription service. It was started by another friend of mine who also died, but that was his legacy, and I helped him plan it out a little bit. It’s something I try to stay involved with and keep tabs on.
James: As you’ve both said, it needs to be discussed and kept in the dialogue, especially when you go into a startup or work at a consulting company, or wherever it is, and you’re working 60 hours a week and really grinding. You want to put your best foot forward and show the world what you can do, but you don’t want that to come at the cost of your mental health. It’s about doing well in your career and being physically and mentally healthy.
What makes a good career is having all those things in good condition, because if one isn’t quite there, it makes things difficult. As you were saying, it’s hard to get that out of someone.
It’s important to check in on your friends and make sure they’re doing okay. It’s great that you’re both involved in improving the dialogue around this kind of thing.
As much as has been done in the past few years, and as you were saying, Aiden, our generation is pretty good at it, there’s still work to do. People need to be more open about their mental health, without it being seen as weak to share how they’re going. Sometimes it can feel like, “I’m not a tough guy if I tell people I’m not having a good day or my home life isn’t very good.” You’re helping to create that space and improve it.
Checking in with people about their Mental Health#
James: One thing I want to touch on is your experience in the mental health area. What tips do you have for checking in with someone? As you were saying, Aiden, you can send a message. Are there other things you do or signs that someone isn’t doing okay? How can we realise that early?
Aiden: When I speak about this, I’m not speaking in any professional capacity whatsoever, and I’m not going to claim otherwise. When I look for signs that someone might be going through something, they’re usually the obvious ones. Maybe they aren’t reaching out as often or spending time doing the things they like. You might reach out and make plans with them, and they go along with the plans until the date but then bail, saying, “I’m just so busy with everything else.”
One thing I’ve noticed, especially with people who tend to be Type A—“Got to get stuff done, got to finish everything”—is that when it comes to mental health issues, they bury themselves in work. They’ll say, “I’m too busy. I’ve got to build this thing. I’ve got to build that thing. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got this other meeting.” If you’ve noticed them doing that more often than not, it’s a good sign to ask, “Are you actually busy, or are you trying to give yourself a lot of busywork to distract yourself from something else?”
It all boils down to asking them a simple question: “Are you actually okay?” Whether or not you have a good relationship with them, they might say, “You know what? I’m actually not,” and it goes from there.
Eric: I will also say that I’m not a professional. Neither of us is; we just have personal experience. There’s ample literature on this from resources like Beyond Blue or Headspace. If you’re interested, you can look it up and become acquainted with the signs and the symptoms of depression, anxiety and other conditions people may be going through, whether they admit it or not.
Something that isn’t talked about often is how not to come across as performative when asking. Don’t ask out of the blue, “Are you okay?” without first building a sense of vulnerability and trust. This is one problem I sometimes see with initiatives like R U OK? Day. If you ask the question just for the sake of asking because it’s that day, no one will give you a straight answer. But if you take the time to build a relationship and create a space where they feel, “I’m not going to suffer ramifications from this, as I might if I talked to HR at work,” and it’s a conversation born out of genuine connection, that’s usually much more conducive.
James: I’ve got one more question before we wrap up. We’ve spoken about how important mental health is and the importance of checking on your friends.
Aiden and Eric’s Advice for Starting Your First Job#
James: What advice would you give someone starting their first job? It could be about mental health, which is obviously important, or anything you would have told yourself when you started your first job. Maybe we’ll start with Aiden.
Aiden: Going back to my conversation about startups and corporates, I’d say to take the time to research all the options available to you. If it makes sense, join a startup or, even better, start one. You’re young, you’ve got time and it might work out really well for you.
The second thing, more specifically to do with mental health, is to make sure you’re taking the time to preserve your own mental health. One of the best ways to do that is to set boundaries. If you think work is too much, set a clear boundary and say, “This is overstepping the bounds I’m comfortable with, so I’m not going to do it.” Communicate your boundaries clearly to the people around you as well, so they know what you can and can’t do, and go from there. The third piece of advice is more general. When you start a new job as a graduate, find out who will be on your team and take every single person out for coffee once. Make that a goal in the first month. I don’t care how many people there are—it could be five, 10 or 20. It might be a bit expensive, but take every one of them out for coffee and get to know them. Ask what makes them tick, what their work experience is and what specifically they do at work.
You’ll tend to find that, A, they’re grateful because who doesn’t love free coffee? And, B, they get to know you on a personal level. Because of that, it’s much easier to get to grips with the team and the work, and you’ll form genuine connections within the first month.
In contrast, many people who tend to be quite introverted don’t talk to anyone for a few weeks. You just need to break out of your shell a little to do that.
James: Eric, what about you? Any advice you would give?
Eric: When I was close to graduating, I had a mentor whom I’d sought out. I went to a speech of his, and we started meeting regularly. He gave me some advice that took me two years to act on: build something. Create a visible identity, content or something you can be proud of outside your role, whatever it happens to be.
That does a lot of things. It gives you confidence, requires you to develop the skills needed to build whatever you want to build and makes you visible. It’s something we can now point to. We both have our own online identities that speak for us, and that’s something we go into in the book as well.
If I’d started earlier, it would be so much more valuable. That’s definitely something I would tell anyone who’s early in their career or still at uni: build something you can point to and say, “I built that. It’s a demonstration of what I can do.”
Aiden: To add to that, James, you’ve pretty much done it. You’ve hit the nail on the head with Graduate Theory. There you go: a shining example.
James: Eric, what you’re saying about building your personal brand is so important, especially today, when you can have things on the internet that let people see what you’re about and what you’ve created without having to meet or spend time with you.
Aiden, it’s also great advice to connect with your team and even the wider organisation, making networking something you do proactively and creating as much of a network as you can, especially when you’re early in your career.
Eric: If I could add to what Aiden was saying, it’s important to acknowledge the caveats that come with setting boundaries, especially when you’re starting out and want to be high-achieving. You want to make a good impression, as we said before, and it can be hard to say no or know how to say it.
That’s a difficult thing to navigate, so you take a lot on. But the first few years of your twenties or your career are when you get to test your bandwidth and see how much work you can do and take on before you feel yourself starting to burn out. Then you stay in that range.
Outro#
James: One key is to say, “Yes, I’m going to take on that extra task, but that means I’ll do this other task more slowly.” You don’t necessarily have to say no, but you should make your manager and whoever is giving you work aware that you already have plenty to do.
That’s important because you don’t want to become someone who says yes to everything. You need that space for yourself. Thanks so much for coming on today. It’s been a really cool and important conversation.
Before we go, where are the best places to connect with both of you, find out more about MentorFold and learn about the book launching next year?
Eric: You can visit the MentorFold website. We’re growing much faster than we thought. We’ve onboarded mentors from Google, Microsoft, Bain & Company, Deloitte and KPMG.
Aiden: Telstra too. There are quite a few big names.
Eric: Bigger names than we anticipated. For anyone who’s at university or has just finished, I think this is a great resource that I wish we’d had when we were starting out.
The book will be on there as well. If you sign up, we’ll send it out to everyone on our list and on social media.
Aiden: Speaking of social media, you can contact us on LinkedIn. We’re both on there, and we can drop a link. I’m guessing you’ll put it in.
James: I’ll put all the links in the show notes, so if you’re interested in connecting with these guys, you can do it there.
Eric: I’m happy to connect or answer any questions.
James: Thanks so much for the chat today, guys.
James: Thanks so much for listening to Graduate Theory. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Aiden and Eric. I certainly got a lot out of it. If you want to find out more or get involved with Graduate Theory, you can go to GraduateTheory.com and read my takeaways and what I learnt from this episode. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing on whatever podcast platform you’re using. If you’re on Apple Podcasts, leaving a review would also be really appreciated.
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Thanks so much again for listening today. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.