For the last couple of years I have been regularly meeting with designers from various countries and backgrounds to offer them mentorship and career guidance. These sessions are one of the most efficient ways I have found to give back to the community some of what I have learned from it — the same reason why we curate and share content here on the UX Collective every week.
The topics we cover in those sessions vary a lot depending on each designer’s particular goals at that point in time: portfolio review, career advice, design critique, questions about working in agencies or working abroad, or simply high-level conversations about where digital design is headed.
The other day I was looking back at all the sessions I have had.
So many faces.
So many people on the other side of the line.
So many challenges to talk through.
Up to this point I have had more than 200 mentorship sessions, according to my Google Hangout call history. Once I week I’ll jump on a video call, for 15–45 minutes, with someone different.
Honestly, I wish I had kept a more detailed log of every one of these conversations. Each story is so unique and so special that I feel deeply connected to the mentee (despite the short duration of the meetings). And still: when I step back and look at the totality of sessions, I am able to identify the patterns on the most common topics people want to chat about. This post is a collection of some of them.