How to Mentor Young Workers in a Remote World

A few days into one of my first jobs in public relations, I remember my manager giving me a spreadsheet and telling me to “start emailing people.” My boss sat roughly 10 feet away from me, and one day I timidly asked for some additional guidance. I remember being told to “just work it out for myself.”

Back then, I’d read many books on the nature of PR, but none of them were much help. My first year in the industry was awful, primarily because despite being regularly told what to do, I was almost never really shown how to do it. The “training” I received was nothing more than lectures when I made mistakes. I was stuck in a constant loop of burnout and depression. This sense of professional abandonment during my first working years is something that still affects me to this day.

It is important to note that all of happened to me: Even though I was barely a foot from several co-workers at any given time, I felt lost. No break room or management-consultant-driven pablum could compensate for the fact that I was never properly .