My Thoughts about 150 Years Mentorship Program

By Sinh Bui

I was fortunate to have an opportunity to be involved in the 150 Years Mentorship Program, where I, together with other enthusiastic mentees, met incredibly inspiring mentors. It was like a perfect match between those who are full of energy but do not know which directions to run into, and ones who have been a long way from their starting points and full of experience.

I had an awesome chance to connect with a successful professional who became my mentor afterward. I learned from his career’s stories, as well as improving necessary skills to land a job that I want. For example, my mentor helped me improve my interview skills, he asked me typical questions in an interview and provided me detailed feedback and advice on how to answer in a better way. With a great experience in hiring people for a long time, his advice enlightened me very much and I realized many mistakes that I made in my interview history. He has also been a great source of inspiration, which motivates me to move forward and be more confident.

In addition to meetings with my mentor, I and other mentees had meetings weekly with the program coordinators, where we have learned so much about every aspect to be successful in professional career. In most of the meetings, we had guests who are highly successful people coming and sharing their experience. I have learned how important networking is in terms of career development, and how to do networking properly in order to build good relationships with people. I also learned about transferable skills, which I found really interesting and useful, it was about linking the skills I have to the skills my dream job needs. In addition, from a session of self-awareness, I understood myself more, thus knowing better about what career should fit my character and capability. Besides, I have learned about how to behave appropriately in professional environment. There are also many other things from the whole program that I have learned and I believe these would be a huge benefit for me in my entire career.

In my opinion, this program is best described by Isaac Newton’s famous quote:

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”

I would like to thank all mentors for spending time to help us, program coordinators for creating this awesome program, and all my mentee-mates for the great time together.

A Video in Vietnamese by Sinh, about his experience in the program: