THE EFFECTS OF MENTORING AND NETWORKING ON CAREER SATISFACTION, SALARY AND PROMOTIONS: A META-ANALYSIS

This meta-analysis examines current gaps in mentoring and networking research. Both mentoring and networking have been shown to lead to career satisfaction, promotions and salary increases. However little research has been done to compare the relative effects that each has on these career outcomes. Recent research that led to this analysis has shown that both networking and mentoring lead to positive career outcomes and both are needed however, some studies revealed that mentoring leads to more promotions while networking leads to higher salary and higher career satisfaction. However when this data was analyzed across more studies, meta-analytically, there were several inconsistencies with the original hypothesis. The findings from this study do suggest that there is a significant and positive correlation between mentoring and intrinsic satisfaction, salary and promotion. However there are unknown moderators present for intrinsic satisfaction. The relationship between networking and intrinsic satisfaction and salary were positive but not significant and networking and promotions were not related significantly. Statistics suggested moderators were present in the networking relationships. Additionally networking did not have a more significant relationship with intrinsic satisfaction and salary than did mentoring. Mentoring did prove to have a more significant effect on promotions than networking did. Overall more research needs to be done to understand the mixed results in this area of research.