3 Amazing UX Design Mentorship Benefits for Your Career

UX design mentorship is a path that not everyone wants to select. When you’re experienced enough, you have huge knowledge.

It’s a perfect chance to help other people who are just starting their design journey.

I was a junior once as well and remember long sleepless nights. My knowledge and skills weren’t enough to land a job, my portfolio wasn’t ready…

To get my first job and understand what improvements I need, I spent long hours searching and analyzing.

I was looking for support, but unfortunately, mentorship wasn’t available 8 years ago for free.

This is why all I could do was search, read, and watch the content from other professionals to learn.

Today I am a Lead UX/UI designer and founder of UX Designers Club. This is my own community where I help designers learn about UX and UI design.

Nevertheless, I own a small circle of dedicated designers, I also decided to become a mentor to find more people who are just starting out.

Among all UX design mentorship platforms, I selected ADP List. This is where my UX design mentorship started.

Professional Growth

When you join ADP List as a mentor, you go through the review process. It’s really cool to know that UX design mentorship is not for everyone there, but only for people with relevant experience and knowledge.

Once I was approved and my public ADP List profile was online, I started to mentor designers immediately. By the way, ADP List is a free mentorship platform.

When I started to connect with my first mentees, I realized that most of the questions are more or less the same. People were asking for a portfolio or CV review, and they wanted to check their case studies.

But sometimes I have really hard questions. For example, one of my mentees asked about long-term career planning specifically for her needs.

UX design mentorship became a challenge for me. I started to read more about different design areas to fill some gaps.

It doesn’t mean I couldn’t answer some questions, but I believed that I need to improve some parts of my knowledge to provide even more constructive advice.

After all, people rely on my suggestions to plan their careers.

I started to read more design articles, watch design YouTube channels, and connect with senior designers.

UX design mentorship made me learn more and more again and again.

I would say that becoming a UX design mentor was a trigger for my professional growth.

As you know, technology is an industry where everything changes fast, so my advice needs to be up-to-date.

You might be wondering how UX design mentorship could improve you as a designer.

Well, this is simple. When you start to learn more as a mentor, you start to improve your own design skills.

For example, I had general advice on how to plan someone’s design career for 5 years.

But what if my mentee wants to stick to the educational industry? It means that the long-term career roadmap would look differently according to her own goals.

This is just one small example of when small details need to be counted for more accurate solutions.

After all, being a mentor is a responsibility that you need to be careful with and provide constructive solutions only.

Personal Brand

Another amazing thing that happened to me once I became a mentor was my personal brand.

Working as a designer for over 8 years, I never thought about personal brand.

I heard about this term but was never curious to learn more about it.

This was until I became a lead designer and started to do UX design mentorship.

There is much advice on how to become a UX designer, how to build a CV, portfolio, case studies…

But unfortunately, no one speaks about the personal brand of a UX/UI designer. Why?

Is it a secret?

I want to reveal the benefits of a personal brand and how to build it.

Think about your 9 to 5 job. It’s cool if you have it. You earn enough money for yourself and your family, but you rely on the company you work at. Imagine the next situation. You’re fired. Yes, you’re fired right from this day.

What would you do?

You’ll start to search for a new job. Ok, but how can you stand out from other designers? What is so special about you?

This is where the personal brand comes into the game.

Your personal brand is your individuality. This is not only your experience but your unique achievements.

UX design mentorship is your chance to get one type of achievement for your personal brand.

You can add to your CV that you’re a mentor or design influencer. You can add volunteer experience as well if you choose the ADP List platform as your major tool.

When you have a UX design mentorship experience, you can stand out from the crowd. Your name will be associated with teaching others, but not a designer only.

This is your chance to go beyond the standard level of most designers.

Your personal brand needs to start with something. Apart from design contests, hackathons, and other achievements, you can consider UX design mentorship.

This is a very interesting path that opens many doors and opportunities for you.

Products and Communication

If you’re interested in helping other people, this is great.

But there is another hidden benefit behind UX design mentorship. It’s your chance to build a community, communicate with your members, and learn about their needs.

Why do you need to do these things?

It’s your chance to start a business! Seriously, imagine being free from your 9–5 job. You can start your own thing and rely on yourself only. Isn’t this amazing?

But in order to start your business, you need to build a dedicated circle of your readers, subscribers, or followers. You need to gain trust as a specialist and UX design mentorship is perfect to do so.

Today, I have mentored 50+ people from 17 countries with 2000+ overall mentorship minutes.

Do you know what it gave me? I know about people’s pain points, so I can provide valuable products or services for them.

During my career, I was always wondering about one thing. How influencers sell their products. I was looking for a magic stick that could help make sales.

The magic stick doesn’t exist. Gaining trust from people is your only tool.

You need to show your expertise, so people will believe in your talent. Try to communicate with people as much as you can.

Once they trust you enough you can start selling your products.

But the most important part of your business is communication. You need to learn from your audience first.

Once you have enough data, start creating products. Don’t create products first and then sell them. It’s a wrong strategy.

UX design mentorship is a perfect chance to know everything about your target audience. Talk to people and ask questions.

Final Thoughts

UX design mentorship is something that not many designers are considering. Especially for free.

It is worth spending your free time helping others. There are multiple things you can get from it.

First, you will support starting designers. This is already a great thing.

Second, you’ll create more opportunities for yourself as a designer. Your UX design mentorship increases your personal brand and the surrounding opportunities.

Third, being a mentor gives you a chance to build your own thing. You can start a business, become a design influencer, and do even more non-standard activities.

So what are you waiting for? Start mentoring today and see the amazing things that will happen to you.