Who do You Want to Be?

Thursday, 12th of August 2010

Women looking for a career today may still struggle to find enough role models in organisations to model and look up to. Whilst the number of women entering companies is rising and many businesses now, in certain industry sectors, hire as many women as they do men, the number of women in truly senior roles is not rising at the rate we might wish it to.

So it is can be hard for young women to find a mentor or role models within their organisation to follow, look up to and most importantly, learn from. Obviously women can learn from both sexes and men can be great mentors too but there is something important for younger women to see other women in organisations whom they would like to emulate. Many women I have met have often expressed a wish "to be like Sarah (or whoever) 'when I grow up'". What if your business doesn't have a Sarah? What if the only senior woman is a senior Partner who may feel more like a trip to Mars than a journey a raw graduate might ever make?

Organisations can help this by setting up networking and women's groups in their businesses for women throughout the business to offer advice and help on developing a career. Coaching networks and groups can be set up - peer to peer coaching can be really effective - to encourage women to discuss their career plans, what they want and how they might manage their career so it works for the rest of their life. Let's talk about raising a family alongside a fruitful career, let's open the dialogue and make it possible for women to think about how to do both.

To kick-start and help this process graduate-women.com has been pulling together a list of profiles of successful women in a range of organisations - they offer their own personal advice about careers for graduate women and tell their stories about how to enjoy both your work and your life. Use them to inspire conversations about your career, just click on the sector you are interested in and explore their story.

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