Mentoring
Why become a mentor?
Our mentors tell us that mentoring offers them an opportunity to give something back and helps someone to benefit from their experience. It also develops their own skills in communication, confidence building, coaching and feedback.
Who can be a mentor?
All our mentors are volunteers; some of them are very experienced mentors or practitioners, whilst others are still in the early stages of their career or even retired or taking a career break. What matters is their desire to help a student or graduate who is just starting their career journey. See the list of available mentors
Mentors can provide support and build confidence in any of the following and much more besides:
- Occupational knowledge
- Job seeking and application processes
- Where to find vacancies
- How to find work experience or voluntary opportunities
- Which skills employers are seeking and how to build them
- How to sell oneself effectively in CVs or applications
Resources on the website will help you to mentor successfully, and the Mentormatch team are always willing to assist with any issues which may emerge.
How does it work?
Mentoring is done mostly by email, although you have the freedom to make other arrangements such as telephone or face-to-face contact if agreed and appropriate. As a guide, your commitment should be no more than an hour a week. Many of our mentors are longstanding and derive great personal satisfaction from giving something back; please join them.
The process is as follows:
- A short profile about yourself.
- Once approved, the contact and personal details are stripped out and the first name and profile is displayed for mentees to choose their preferred mentor.
- Mentees (students or graduates) register and browse the mentors. Mentors are asked to register their details on our website.
- They choose a potential mentor.
- We approve the match, and the e-mail addresses are sent to mentor and mentee respectively.
- The partners then contact each other to begin the mentoring process
- Once you are registered, you will be able to log in to a secure area of the website to change your details if you wish to, and view the contact details of your mentee together with what they hope to gain.
Some mentors wait for some time before being chosen, but having a range of mentors is very important and we value every offer of help.