Alumni mentoring is a meaningful and rewarding program for students. It helps universities engage alumni and provide new students with mentoring, giving them access to a network of professionals. These professionals share valuable insight and even advise the fresh graduates to prepare them for the world after graduation.
Alumni networks mentoring is beneficial for both the mentor and mentees. Let’s have a look into them.
Benefits for Mentee
- Prepares the students for a new workplace
- Improve professional skills
- Get industry insights
- Benefits for mentors
- Career advise and guidance
Benefits for Mentors
- Improved campus interaction
- Share valuable professional experience
- Develop leadership abilities.
How to Create an Alumni Mentoring Program?
Starting an alumni program is similar to launching community mentoring programs but with some tweaks. Here are the steps involved:
Determine the Goals
Like all other mentoring programs, youth mentoring also starts with determining the purpose of the program. The purpose is to prepare fresh graduates for the future, potential opportunities out there, career advice, and set the right expectations before joining a company.
The goals of the program must have a bigger purpose. They must align with the objectives of the organization. Also, the goals must be SMART so that they can be measured by the end of the program.
Create A Structure
A structure is similar to an outline that defines what the program will entail, what outcomes are expected, and what approach to adopt to achieve those outcomes. choose the best performers from your alumni pool for the mentoring session. the individuals selected for the mentorship must be suitable for the role. They must genuinely be invested in helping the new graduates succeed and avoid the mistakes they made when they landed their foot in the corporate world.
Offer Mentorship Training
The alumni who will play the role of mentors must be offered training so that they know what’s expected of them. They may be participating in Mentoring for Leadership Development in their companies and they become be preparing to become leaders of the future.
Training sessions will give them insight on what approach to adopt, what kind of training to offer, how to get started, conflict management, problem-solving, and other roles that a mentor must perform to make the program a success.
Start the Program
Make sure every student knows a mentoring program is going on. Executives must endorse the program so that students understand the importance of joining. The key is to make sure everyone knows this program is important to launch a successful career.
You might make the program mandatory; it’s not recommended otherwise the participants might fail to show interest. Like all other programs, be it reverse mentoring or peer mentoring, keep your alumni networks mentoring voluntary too.
Measure the Progress
Keep on measuring the progress of the program even if it’s on-going and make changes in the process as and when the need arises. The best way of measuring progress is by getting feedback from mentees and mentors. Do track the progress of each mentee to be sure the program is working. If the result is positive, you can also start community mentoring programs.