Ms Busch-Holfelder, the mentoring program of the very agile geo-IT scene in Bonn brings its players together. Mentors from companies and administration as well as students from the geosciences have been united in tandems since the beginning of the year. You have accompanied them. How did that work?
Katrin Busch-Holfelder: Fortunately, I met the students in person in March 2020 shortly before the lockdown. In an initial workshop, we set out together to find out what these young people are made of. It's about simple questions that are often not so easy to answer: "What can I do?" and "What do I want? If you want to be satisfied and happy in your job, you need to know what you are good at. Only then will they know where they want to go. The workshop was great. I was impressed by the students' self-reflection.
And then everything turned out quite differently than I had expected when it came to scaling down social life. How did you experience the tandem situation?
First of all: despite all the drama, I see the pandemic as an opportunity. Without crises and challenges, there can be no further development. We've all experienced that in recent months. Working from home quickly became the norm. Meetings, conferences, trade fairs and workshops suddenly took place virtually. The technology was there and the situation required a change of course. And lo and behold, in many cases, the switch to a virtual environment went more or less smoothly. The situation was certainly just as hard for the students at the beginning as it was for many other people.
The mentees stayed on the ball thanks to online networking. Together with the students, I held an online workshop for reflection in July that was tailored to the pandemic. The focus was on the topic of coronavirus and which strengths and approaches the mentees used to handle the crisis well. Afterwards, the students also had the task of asking the mentors about their jobs and presenting the results in the subsequent "Self-marketing" workshop. We developed the interview guidelines for this together: What are the job-specific challenges, what skills are in demand, what is particularly fulfilling and fun about the job and what does everyday working life look like.
What happened next?
We continued in October with a self-marketing presence day. After looking inward, it is essential to look at the external impact and self-marketing in career coaching. We started with the importance of self-marketing and networking and later moved on to the practical use of business networks such as LinkedIn and XING. The specific skills we looked at in the first workshop were now in demand again: what is behind it when someone describes themselves as 'communicative'? Does that mean they are good at resolving conflicts, asking the right questions and asserting themselves in discussions? These are completely different core skills that can lead to success in different job profiles. And how can these skills be communicated to the outside world? A so-called 'elevator pitch' gets to the heart of all this, and it was precisely this pitch that each participant delivered to the group. In a maximum of 60 seconds. Just as long as it would take to stand in the elevator together. The great thing was to see how easily everyone succeeded, even though that is exactly what is difficult at the beginning, namely presenting yourself.
The students had also prepared the input for the job wall by talking to their mentors. The mentor's job was presented by the corresponding mentee. The result was a complete job wall, for example from the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, companies such as Terrestris or AED Sicad, the Federal Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (BMVI) and the Cologne District Government. This harbors incredibly valuable potential that goes far beyond the mere networking of two people. The students were provided with dozens of job ideas in one fell swoop.
Ms. Busch-Holfelder, you are a career coach, keynote speaker and recently also a book author. Your guidebook "Zukunftsfähig im Job" was published in August this year. How important is networking for mentees and mentors?
Networking gives mentees and mentors a gift for the future, namely valuable contacts. Every contact knows a number of other people who could potentially become important. That is fantastic. For both sides. For the mentors, networking with young people has even more effects: Intergenerational understanding and togetherness grows through dialog. They have the opportunity to counteract the shortage of skilled workers, which persists in many areas despite coronavirus due to the age pyramid, and to find suitable employees. And of course, the same applies to mentors: introspection is a prerequisite for job satisfaction. It helps if the mentees ask about job content, challenges and scope for action for the job wall. After all, managers also need to constantly develop themselves in order to stay on the ball. Keyword 'lifelong learning'.
And how are you personally experiencing the pandemic? As a sought-after seminar provider and keynote speaker, you were previously on the road a lot....
I am now fully immersed in the new normality of hybrid formats. Face-to-face and online both have their appeal and their raison d'être. This will not be reversed in the future. It is now more important than ever that we remain creative and active. As I said at the beginning, and even if it sounds trite: There is an opportunity in every crisis. I myself, for example, would not have had the leisure to really take off with my book if I hadn't been forced to pause last year after a skiing accident and a failed knee operation. My now teenage children always say: "Even when your glass is empty, it always seems as if there are still a few drops left in it". I'm going through the pandemic with this attitude.
Ms. Busch-Holfelder, thank you for talking to us.
The interview was conducted by Monika Rech-Heider.
