Career Mentoring in Online Communities: Seeking and Receiving Advice from an Online Community

Although people frequently seek mentoring or advice for their career, most mentoring is performed in person. Little research has examined the nature and quality of career mentoring online. To address this gap, we study how people use online Q&A forums for career advice. We develop a taxonomy of career advice requests based on a qualitative analysis of posts in a career-related online forum, identifying three key types: best practices, career threats, and time-sensitive requests. Our quantitative analysis of responses shows that both requesters and external viewers value general information, encouragement, and guidance, but not role modeling. We found no relation between the type of requests and features of responses, nor differences in responses valued by requesters versus external viewers. We present design recommendations for supporting online career advice exchange.