For Mentors
For over thirty years, the Griffith Industry Mentoring Program (IMP) has connected Griffith students and recent graduates with industry professionals based in Australia and beyond for career development learning, confidence-building and industry exposure. We support hundreds of mentoring partnerships throughout the year, in a wide range of backgrounds and industries.
What is the Time Commitment?
Griffith students are incredibly diverse, so each mentoring relationship is different. We have intentionally designed the Program to be rigorous but flexible to accommodate different life stages and learning goals. We encourage mentoring pairs to collaborate for a minimum of six hours per mentoring session, which works out to approximately one hour per fortnight.
How it Works
Select each bubble to explore a detailed explanation of what is involved in each stage of the mentoring process.
Once students or recent graduates register with IMP, they attend a mandatory information session and complete our four-step registration process. After completing registration, prospective mentees can request a mentor based on search criteria they select using our search engine. As a mentee-led Program, mentees initiate the request and communication processes. If you receive a request, you will always have the option to accept or decline.
It's important to understand that mentor profiles are de-identified until after matching, so prospective mentees base their decision to request on the experience and skills highlighted in your profile. Mentors with complete profiles are requested more frequently.
Close When a prospective mentee requests you as a mentor, you will receive an email from our system.
- It's important to understand that mentees are only able to request one mentor at a time, so they are eagerly waiting for your response to enable them to participate in the Program. We respectfully ask you to please respond within three days. Mentees may cancel their request at any time, and we recommend they cancel if they do not hear back within one week.
- You can either accept or decline a request. If you choose to decline, please send a message to the student with your reason when prompted.
- If you accept, contact information is emailed to both parties.
Close As a mentee-led Program, mentees are expected to initiate contact with you once you have accepted their request. We encourage mentees to send an introductory email to begin this process. Sometimes mentees can be nervous, or not confident to reach out. If you don’t hear from your mentee, we ask you to please send them an email.
If your mentee does not respond to your message(s), please contact the IMP team.
Next Step
Once you have officially accepted your mentee, you can begin collaborating as soon as you like! We suggest getting together as soon after the match as feasible, and encourage you to make plans with your mentee to attend any Program networking events.
The First Conversation?
We strongly suggest that you have a conversation early on in the relationship, either in-person, over the phone or online and encourage mentees to initiate this. This personal interaction will go far in creating a connection and setting up a good foundation for your relationship. Here are some guidelines for the conversation:
- Tell your mentee that you are excited to work with them! Sharing your enthusiasm will help reassure them that you are committed to helping the relationship succeed.
- Build rapport with your mentee by asking questions about their background and experiences.
- It is important at the beginning of the relationship to talk about expectations and goals for the mentoring partnership. Matched pairs can either start this dialogue in this first conversation or set up another time to do so. Our IMP Mentoring Agreement is a useful resource to guide this process.
Close Every mentoring relationship is unique. In fact, there is so much to learn that there are many entire books devoted to the topic of building an effective mentoring relationship. Below are just a few guidelines on setting goals and expectations for your mentoring partnership.
Set Goals with Your Mentee
- Setting goals with your mentee at the beginning of the relationship is critical because it sets the direction for your partnership and provides insight on the best ways to support your mentee. Use our Goal Setting Guide as a reference.
- If your mentee doesn’t know his/her goals, this can be your first mentoring moment. You can ask questions such as “What made you sign up for the mentoring program?” or “What about my profile stood out to you?” or “What are your specific concerns and questions right now?” or simply “How can I help you?” Our Goal Setting Guide outlines other helpful questions and goal-setting models to explore.
- It is common for goals to evolve over time, so make a point to check in and ask your mentee if their priorities are changing as they learn more about their industry.
Set Expectations with Your Mentee
- Discuss when, how often, and for how long you will meet.
- Determine relationship norms for punctuality, responsiveness and communication preferences.
- Make sure to keep the relationship a priority.
Close Below are some suggestions on building and nurturing your ongoing relationship with your mentee.
Get to Know your Mentee
- Ask thoughtful questions about the mentee’s interests, experiences and background.
- Follow up on any important steps your mentee has taken, such as a job interview or a leadership experience, and ask what they learned.
- Listen actively, reflect on your mentee's comments and ask insightful questions to stimulate their learning.
Share your Story
- Sharing your story and experiences helps to build trust and rapport.
- Think about what you have learned from your mistakes and how your mentee might also learn from them.
- Share how you balance work and life and how you manage your wellbeing at work.
Offer Options versus Solutions
- Mentees often know the answer, but need a bit of confidence to back themselves. Ask your mentee to share their thoughts about a challenge they are facing and help them process their own ideas.
- Suggest options the student might explore, for example, “Have you looked into…” or “Something I found helpful when I was at uni…” versus “You should…” or “You need to…”.
- Often people will not follow our suggestions, so don’t get discouraged if your mentee does not heed your advice.
Close Mentoring Sessions
We run two mentoring sessions each year, roughly aligned with academic study periods Trimesters 1 and 2 (Session 1: March - June and Session 2: July - October). At the end of each session, we formally release you from your mentoring partnership to enable you to work with another mentee(s), should you wish to do so. Our goal, however, is to develop a connected community where mentors and mentees alike benefit, so we encourage mentoring pairs to continue their connection on an informal basis.
Flexible participation and communication
Your IMP account enables you to manage your participation in the Program around your schedule and our responsive team is always on hand to assist you to make the most of your participation. We encourage mentoring partners to work in whatever way suits them best. You can interact with your mentee online, via email or phone, or in-person - whatever works best for you both.
Interested? Join us!
To sign up as a Griffith Industry Mentor, navigate to the Create Account link at the top right of the screen and create your account.
