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When a graduating student explores possible career options they can benefit from their university or college’s mentoring program. These are often called “Industry Mentoring”, “Alumni Connections” or the like. Meeting someone in their field of choice can help the student understand what it is really like working in the field.
Mentoring advice can range from the types of roles that exist, how the work relates to their course studies, to how to navigate a professional environment, expectations and limitations. Even simple questions like “Will I have my own cubicle? Can I bring a plant to the office? What is expected these days?”
For students who are new to the world of work and unsure how to interact with professionals, these programs help move the student’s vision of what it may be like to work in their field to the actual reality of it.
Mentoring resources can help ensure the mentoring relationship gets off to a good start. For example, a mentee was set to meet their mentor at Starbucks. The mentor waited but the mentee never arrived, only to later find out the mentee sat at another Starbucks down the street, but never contacted them to figure out why they were not there. The mentor, being a lawyer, lost interest in meeting again. Simple miscommunications like these can be avoided by following a mentoring preparation checklist that includes reminders to verify meeting location, time zone (if virtual) and ensure to install any new tool (like Teams) before the call.
Searching for opportunities in their field of study may not be easy for graduating students. A math department found that most students were looking for jobs that require doing advanced math on the job. This was solved by creating industry maps – listing where math and statistics are required in various industries and then finding the titles of these positions. Initially most students were focused on finance but this process opened their eyes to math-related positions in many industries from manufacturing to public policy. In this case the mentor created the industry maps, but ultimately the program manager should research for and include this type of content.
Students should set mentoring goals so they have a clear plan for the mentoring relationship. A good mentoring program will require students to refine their goals twice:
In the program registration form and matching process
Require students to reflect on what they want to learn by selecting and detailing their interests in terms of industry, functional roles, mentoring interests, career goals and challenges. Then they could select from a shortlist of potential mentors who best fit their interests.
Through mentoring checklists and activities
Once matched, a checklist linked to resources can help the mentee refine their plans. A goal-setting page where they need to define one or a few goals and tasks to achieve them is important to define clear action items to achieve results. This should be done together with the mentor to decide on the most useful goals to work on during the mentorship.
Another method to ensure students get the best possible mentor match is called a “Chemistry Check”. The program would provide each mentee with several possible mentors, set based on a custom matching algorithm. The student can contact them and schedule introduction calls. After the meetings the student rates and writes why they prefer a specific mentor. Moving beyond a static online profile to a real life call helps find a better match – a mentor that they connect with best out of the available options. Some programs do this process manually but it’s time-consuming. A few mentoring tools now offer chemistry checks functionality.
The most common mentor-mentee matching strategies are:
- Self-matching – where the mentee selects a mentor from an algorithm-set shortlist – this requires reminders in case the mentee doesn’t make a selection.
- Admin-matching – often used in cohorts – set a deadline to register as a mentor, then as a mentee, and then the admin matches everyone at once.
Helping the student understand the marketplace, find the right mentor and refine their goals will help them get the most from the mentoring program.
