One of the things that we occasionally get asked is how as a mentor you can make your profile stand out and look attractive to potential mentees.

Let’s start by looking at how the matching process works and why a profile is important. Once you have registered to participate in our mentoring programme the next step is to complete your profile. For mentors this information will help us to match you to mentees who are looking for your skills and experience, for mentees it provides the information to enable us to suggest potential mentors based on the matching criteria selected.

Once a mentee has completed their profile, they will be shown a broad list of potential mentors who match the criteria they selected, with the closest matches at the top of the list, moving down the list to show mentors who meet some of the criteria, but not all. The mentee can change the search criteria and narrow the search down by selecting specific criteria to do an exact match.

Regularly review your profile

Checking over your profile from time to time can really help your profile get noticed as there may be new skills and experiences that you can add that will help you to appear in more searches. We do add new choice to the lists from time to time, so it’s always worth checking if a skill or area of expertise that you have has been added. The more skills and expertise you can offer the better chance you have of appearing in a search.

When a search is conducted there may be several mentors who have selected the same skills and experience as you, so how do you make your profile stand out? The more information you can input into your profile around your career, experience and areas of expertise the more likely you are to stand out and really give the mentee a feel for you as a person.

If there is an area where you feel you have a particular expertise, focus on this and give details of any accomplishments in this area. You might also want to give brief information on what you are currently doing in your career and how you got there, what aspects of your work you are most passionate about and why, and what you consider to be your biggest professional and personal accomplishments.

Photo

A key recommendation is that you make sure you have uploaded a photo of yourself. We find that mentors with profile photos tend to get more request than those who do not. Ideally use a recent photo from the last 12 months which is a headshot on a plain background, that is well lit and where you are smiling. Don’t forget to save the photo once you have uploaded it.