Becoming a YPNG Mentor will help young people choose their career path and motivate them to get the education they will need to competes as adults in our rapidly evolving economy.
You don’t need any special equipment to do an audio recording. The voice memo program on iPhones and Android phones were used to make most of the podcasts on our site. Send your recording, a photo of yourself and a short biography as an attachment to Administrator@YPNG.co. We will convert it to a podcast and post it on our site.
Suggested Topics for Your Recording
1. Give some background on yourself. Talk about who influenced your life growing up, the kind of education and training you received and what led you to choose your particular career.
2. Give an overall summary of what is involved in your career specialty and the personal traits one must have to be successful. For example, a tool and die maker is required to know trigonometry and needs good hand/eye coordination while a person in marketing must have strong interpersonal skills and the ability to analyze marketing data and statistics.
3. Talk about the pace of change in your workplace and if there is the need for continuing education to remain competitive.
4. Tell our YPNG Members what you find most satisfying about your career and try to give some examples.
5. Tell them what you find most challenging and what you dislike. There are parts of all jobs that are less enjoyable than others. Let people hear both sides.
6. Give the Members an example of what you do at work on a typical day. Tell them details such as the number of people you interact with up and down your organization, the type of equipment you might use, the amount of travel that might be involved, your typical hours and perhaps how you balance your home and family life if that is difficult in your particular career.
7. Talk about education and training requirements you feel are necessary to prepare for your career. You might also mention the institutions and organizations that you feel do the best job of preparing people for your career specialty.
8. Explain to them the pathway you have to normally follow to reach the top rungs of your career.
9. Give members your thoughts about compensation and future economic prospects for your career. The YPNG editors will also add information at the end of your submission related to compensation statistics when there is historical wage and salary data available. They will also provide sources for that information so a member can do additional research on a career’s economic prospects.
Virtual Classrooms
YPNG is now able to offer you the opportunity to have face-to-face contact with students in your own virtual classroom sessions with up to five YPNG members. These will be recorded and archived so other young people can access them like your podcast. If you want to participate, just sign up as a Mentor. We will contact you and calendar the session for the day and time you choose and notify the area high schools and our members about the opportunity for them to register for your classroom. Students who sign up will be asked to submit two questions that you can view on our site so you will be able to see what topics most interest these young people.