Mentoring: Experienced graduates supporting final-year students and young graduates

Entering a school like EDHEC and joining the EDHEC Alumni association means you can confidently rely on a close-knit and diverse community. It also allows you to benefit from unique opportunities and keep in touch with others, even years after graduating! One of the finest examples of this is our Job-hunting support scheme, where alumni offer their support to final-year students and young graduates from EDHEC!

Become a mentor at EDHEC ALUMNI

5 reasons to become a mentor

Offer advice and support

By now you have plenty of experience, but you probably remember what things were like when you completed your studies. That shared experience is an invaluable point of departure to begin a new relationship through the mentoring scheme. You know what students are going through, you speak their language and understand their codes. All of that creates a climate of trust, and so your mentee will be willing to listen and ask you for advice.

Share the benefits of your network

After a career of 5, 10, 15 years or more, you have had time to develop an extensive network in various business sectors and companies. For young students finishing their studies and looking for a permanent job, your network could be a major asset! It could steer them towards career opportunities they wouldn’t find in the job offers made publicly available. The best positions are often found thanks to word-of-mouth.

Offer some structure and help define objectives

A business school diploma will always give you a strong hand. But it doesn’t mean students know all the secrets of the working world. They may be plagued by doubt and there is always a risk they will spread themselves too thinly. As their “guide”, the mentor is on hand to analyse the mentee’s career plans and reflect on the various options so they head in the right direction. The fact that the mentor’s work experience might be in a different sector to the one targeted is not a problem and could even be an advantage. 

Suggest practice sessions

In accompanying the student, the sponsor can suggest practising before upcoming interviews. From experience, mentors know the kind of trick questions that might be asked. And so they’ll be able to advise the mentee so they don’t get rattled and can show the very best of themselves.

Enjoy a human experience

Apart from the desire to renew ties with your school and recall your years in higher education, becoming a mentor with EDHEC Alumni is a way to engage in a human experience in the medium and long term with a student or young graduate from the School. These relatively formal encounters at first can over time lead to professional partnerships or even warm friendships.

How to become a mentor

The EDHEC Alumni network continues to expand thanks to the involvement of all of its members. If you would also like to contribute and share your experience with students or young graduates, nothing could be simpler! 

To become a mentor after 5 years of work experience, the first step is to log onto ALUMNI CONNECT on the alumni.edhec.edu website. You can then complete your profile, set your matching preferences and choose the Job-hunting support scheme. Finally, simply tell us in which areas you are in a position to share your expertise with beneficiaries. 

From skills and business sectors to responsibilities and location, every effort is made to ensure optimal mentor/mentee matches!

Ready to take on the adventure?

Your mentoring role starts here !

Alumni & Mentor: feedback on the experience by Julien Godinger

A willingness to get involved in the Alumni network 

Let’s begin by introducing him! Julien Godinger currently works as a content production consultant and is the founder of Smart & Agile Consulting. He graduated in 2000 from the EDHEC Grande Ecole programme.

He has many fond memories from his time in the School: a very rich curriculum with unforgettable experiences in the company of other students, as well as discussions with committed professors and extracurricular activities. He also chaired the student association Cyclope!

20 years later, he decided to get involved in the life of the School once again by becoming a mentor! “In the current climate, I wanted to give up some of my time to EDHEC, whose network was instrumental in allowing me to develop my career when I graduated. I felt that trying to help students during such a difficult period would be the best way to get involved.” 

Mentoring came naturally 

It has now been 6 months since he started accompanying graduates undergoing a career change, helping them to find the right path and answering their questions to the best of his ability. So far he has teamed up with two students.

With the first, they spoke once a week for 2 months as the student urgently needed his support.

The mentoring partnership is ongoing with the second. Their meetings take place less frequently (around once every 1 or 2 months). The young woman is in need of long-term support as she is currently working on an entrepreneurial project.

Covid-19 forced us to hold our meetings remotely, but the mentor/mentee relationship didn’t seem to suffer much as a result. Due to the unprecedented public health crisis, the two graduates were facing a new phase in their professional lives and were desperately in need of a mentor’s experience to get an outside perspective on their choices and goals. This dialogue is also a way to establish a methodology and learn to manage priorities.

The mentor/mentee relationship is built up step-by-step

First of all, it’s important to understand each other’s background.

And so the mentee must be willing to “open up” a bit. In most cases, one’s personality and past experiences heavily influence career choices, and even the way one sets career ambitions and goals.

Julien therefore advises students and young graduates to “do some introspection before joining the mentoring scheme to show the mentor that you’re thinking clearly and that you have already begun a process of reflection before reaching out”.

The initial conversations are therefore a way to get to know the mentee and analyse their background and goals so you can confirm that their plans make sense.

Then comes the phase when the mentor shares his own experience and presents his network to steer the young person in the right direction.

Between each mentoring session, each participant has objectives to meet.

The benefits of this experience for the mentor

In 6 months of mentoring, Julien has already benefited both personally and professionally from these regular meetings with EDHEC students.

“On a personal level, I’m glad to be of use because they really were in need of reassurance and advice. On a professional level, I’ve been able to give work to one of my two mentees … so I hope I can tell you a great success story a year from now!” 

As for recommending the mentoring scheme to old classmates, Julien takes the opportunity of this testimonial to do so. "Becoming a mentor should be a personal choice. It requires a certain commitment and time if you are to do things right. But it’s a very satisfying experience!"

If you’ve never thought about becoming a mentor, you now know all you need to know to take up the adventure with EDHEC Alumni! There is plenty of demand out there and your profile could help the upcoming generation to confidently tackle their ambitious career plans!