“Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.”
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson totally shows that every person needs a mentor in their life. What could be better than having that mentor from your own alumni network?
Every alumni association should run an alumni mentorship program in order to support it's young alumni. Such programs are a great means of increasing engagement in the alumni network and for boosting the image of the alumni association and the institute as well.
An alumni mentorship program has immense benefits for all the stakeholders involved. In order to maximize these benefits and run the alumni mentorship program in a good way a lot of planning and detailing is required.
Through this article we shall see the best practices that alumni associations must employ in order to run their alumni mentorship program in a smooth way.
Design the program in detail before initiating the program Whenever the foundation of something new is being laid out, having a complete road map from before hand is very important. Alumni associations must decide their goals, their audience and the format in which they will be running the mentorship program. Having a clear picture of what is to be done ahead is helpful always. They must decide on the process of onboarding mentors and mentees, the selection criteria behind the same, the process of mentor-mentee matching and more such details before hand. The alumni association can then do a trial run of their design in order to check the feasibility of it.
Understand the needs of your alumni network well Alumni of every institute have very different areas of interests and expect very different things from their alumni association and even from their alumni mentorship programs. The alumni association should bring in mentors relevant to their alumni and run the program in a way which benefits the mentees and the overall alumni network the most. The alumni association can ask the mentors to fill up their expectations and then on the basis of the mentees they can bring in the mentors.
Map the mentors to the mentees in an efficient way Mapping the correct mentee with the correct mentor is a very important responsibility of the alumni association. If the matching isn't right the mentor would waste his experience and expertise and the mentee too wouldn't gain anything. The alumni association can devise some mixers and events to allow the mentors and mentees to meet and then let them mutually decide who to partner with. The association can also ask the mentors and mentees to fill out an application outlining their expectations and their preferences and then the association can do that matching on their own. The alumni association can partner with an online alumni management software as well in order to use technology to match the mentors and mentees. Either way this is the most important step in making the alumni mentorship program a success. The association can change and optimize it's method of matching the mentors and mentees according to the feedback received from them.
Do a trial run for your alumni mentorship program before launching a full fledged one. When the association is planning out the roadmap for the first ever alumni mentorship program it is better to do a trial run wherein they can onboard a couple of mentors and mentees and see how their strategies are playing out. This will help in rectifying any mistakes that are there and the program can be totally error free before launching it. A trial run will help in validating if the mentor - mentee matching process, feedback system and the program on the whole is flawless or not.
Make a dedicated portal for running the alumni mentorship program successfully. The alumni association can maintain a dedicated portal for the smooth running of the alumni mentorship program. They can partner with an online alumni management software too in case they don't have their own set up. The software can help in the onboarding mentors and mentees. It can help the mentor and mentees in filling up their preferences and then finding the profiles of all the available mentor / mentees. On this portal the mentors and mentees can provide their feedback and engage with the association and the other people of the network too.
Publicize your alumni mentorship program well Every new product or feature needs to be publicized. The audience or the users need to be made aware of every new functionality being introduced. Similarly the alumni association must work towards informing the entire alumni network about the upcoming alumni mentorship program. The publicity should be done in such a way that more and more alumni who were not even keeping in touch with the network or not even signed up on the network become interested in the program and finally join the network for being a part of the mentorship program.
Take feedback from both the mentor and the mentee in the middle of the program. Feedback is an integral part of any successful program. Feedback helps in correcting any possible issues before things get out of hand. A feedback system can be integrated in the alumni mentorship program so that the mentor and mentee can understand each other better and the mentor can provide guidance to the mentee in a better way or in a way which would help the mentee more. In case the mentor is facing issues with the mentee, he/she can communicate that to the association through a feedback form. There can be cases when the mentor or the mentee becomes totally unresponsive after opting for the program and in such a case a feedback from the affected party would help the alumni association in taking care of the situation. The feedback system would also help the alumni association in making amendments to their mentor-mentee matching process and make the entire program better in all possible respects. Thus, taking regular feedbacks from both the mentors and mentees every now and then is very important.
Provide a short training workshop to the mentors so that they can guide their mentees in the best possible way. A mentor might be very knowledgeable and experienced but he must be compassionate and kind to his / her mentees. The mentor must communicate with the mentee in a certain way so that the mentee grasps things and is comfortable with the mentor as well. A short training workshop should be provided by the alumni association to the mentors in order to make them aware of all that they can do to guide their mentees in the best possible way. All the do's and don'ts of mentorship can be explained to the mentors along with the expectations that the alumni association has from them. The mentor can be briefed about their mentee(s) too so that they know the kind of person they will be dealing with. If the mentor has a clear picture of what lies ahead and what is expected from him / her then the program surely will be a bigger success!
Try to keep one on campus meeting of all the mentors and mentees together to make them aware of the expectations that they can have from this program. Before starting each new leg of the alumni mentorship program the alumni association can keep a mixer event where in the mentors and the mentees can casually meet for the first time. Most of the mentorship happens virtually as the mentor and the mentee can be in different parts of the world or country in alumni mentorship programs. Having a single mixer event even once a year for all the people in the program will help in boosting the strength of the program greatly. In such events the alumni association can outline the benefits of such programs and also all that the mentors and the mentees can do in order to make the program a success.
Measure success of your alumni mentorship program Use various metrics to analyze the outcomes and measure the success of your alumni mentorship program. The alumni association can analyze the results of promotions that they are running for mentorship program and see the clicks that they are getting. Apart from this, the feedback from the mentors and the mentees is specially important in measuring how well the program is running. The alumni association analyze the feedback and also finally see how well the young alumni is doing after the mentorship program that will speak the most for the success of the alumni mentorship program.
An alumni mentorship program helps a lot of young alumni in building a good career ahead and makes them very loyal to the alumni association. Alumni mentorship programs are a very beneficial outcome of alumni networks and produce some amazing outcomes.
If you are looking to run a successful alumni mentorship program the above tips are a must read!
Comments