Support UoB students as a mentor

As a mentor there are several benefits to mentoring a University of Birmingham student or recent graduate including:

• A way to connect or re-connect with the University of Birmingham 
• Enhance your professional development
• Reflect on your own experiences and gain a new perspective from your mentee
• Gain satisfaction from knowing that your knowledge and experiences have supported someone to realise their full potential
• Raise your company profile with the future graduate talent

For our students and recent graduates, mentoring provides them with the opportunity to:

• Gain real insight into particular job role or sector from an experienced professional
• Uncover their strengths, develop new skills and learn how to articulate these during recruitment processes
• Establish a professional relationship and develop their network
• Sound out their ideas with an industry professional who can give constructive and honest feedback to help make informed decisions

You can find out more about the impact of mentoring through our bank of mentee case studies

As a mentor on our programme your role is to support your mentee by having career focussed discussions that develop the mentee to explore new opportunities and build their confidence. By sharing your experiences and advice this increases the mentees awareness, knowledge and insight, helping them to gain a clearer direction for achieving their career aspirations.  

Time commitment

We ask our mentors to volunteer one hour each month over the course of the scheme (6 months). However, this is flexible and something we encourage you to discuss with your mentee during your first meeting.

Mentor training

Once you have registered as a mentor, you will receive access to our online training course which provides useful resources to help structure your mentorship.

Communication methods

We recommend meeting face to face where possible but understand this may not be feasible depending on availability and location. Alternatively, you may look to use virtual channels instead such as Zoom, Skype, Teams etc. We encourage you to agree how your future mentoring meetings will take place during your initial meeting and how you will communicate with one another in between meetings (e.g. the frequency and format).

Support

Our mentoring team are on-hand to offer any advice or additional support during the mentorship and will check-in with both parties at various points. 

1. To join the scheme you will be asked to register via our online mentoring platform – UoB Mentoring Connect. Once on the platform you will create a mentor profile and answer various questions around your experiences and expertise.

2. You will be provided with access to our online mentor training course to help prepare you for your mentoring relationship.

3. Based on the information you have provided through your mentor profile, our Mentoring Team will match you to a suitable mentee and connect you with one another to kick-start the mentorship.

4. Throughout the mentorship (typically 6 months) our Mentoring Team will keep in touch to make sure everything is progressing smoothly and offer any additional support, should you need it.  

Please note, the onus is placed on the mentee to drive the relationship by arranging meetings and suggesting discussion topics to ensure the conversations are mentee focused. 

We are always delighted to welcome new mentors to our programmes.  To register your interest, please email mentoring@contacts.bham.ac.uk and our Mentoring Team will get back to you with sign-up instructions for our platform UoB Mentoring Connect. 

For any further questions, you can contact our Mentoring Team via mentoring@contacts.bham.ac.uk. 

You can also access our mentor FAQs webpage.