Our mentoring scheme aims to help with career growth and development by strategically matching those who are looking for additional knowledge or advice with suitable mentors.
However, it’s much more than that. It’s a learning and development toolkit that offers a wide range of support materials to guide users through the mentoring process and the roles of mentor and mentee, ensuring that the mentoring relationship stays on track and that users achieve their mentoring goals.
Tips for mentors – How to make your profile stand out
When setting up your profile remember to include information about your career highlights, and any particular areas of expertise or guidance that you feel you can offer to a potential mentee. Include both professional and personal skills that you have.
As mentees can be seeking guidance for a wide range of reasons, the more information you can provide the easier it will be for mentees to understand the level of support you can provide.
Don’t forget to regularly go into your profile and refresh and update it as you acquire new skills and experiences.
Tips for mentees – How to find the best mentor for you
When completing your profile it is important to include as much detail as possible around what you are hoping to get out of a mentoring relationship, and any specific areas you would like to discuss or receive guidance on. This will help your mentor to determine whether they are able to provide you with the right support and plan how they might help you to achieve your goals.
When looking for a mentor the initial search will list potential mentors who match the criteria you selected in your profile. The mentors at the top of the search will be a closer match than those further down the list.
You can of course change the selection criteria and filter the results to get a match as close as possible to your requirements. Sometimes there may not be a mentor who exactly fits your requirements so you may need to decide which criteria are the most important and search accordingly.
You may spot a potential mentor who you think is right for you but may want a little more specific information before you send a mentoring request, you can use the Ask a Question feature to do this.
The platform generates you an automatic mentoring request based on the information you provided in your profile. You may want to edit this to add in more information which will give your mentor a really good idea of the type of mentoring help that you require.
Finally, if you are accepted by a mentor make sure you make contact with them straight away to organise your first meeting.
If at any point you change your mind, make sure you withdraw your mentoring request and let the mentor know. You can do this through your relationship dashboard by clicking on the Details tab and withdrawing from there.
If you follow these simple tips you will give yourself the best chances of making a good mentoring match.