Career mentoring – how to find a mentor
The process of finding a mentor is facilitated by Career Connections, the ICAS career mentoring platform. Learn more about what’s involved and how to get started.
Career Connections is the new ICAS career mentoring platform. It helps you to find and connect with potential mentors no matter where they are in the world, with the ability to message, set up and host online or in-person meetings.
Below you’ll find a summary of how the process works, our Career Connections Guidelines and information on how to get started.
Getting started – finding a mentor
Here’s a summary of how the process works for mentees:
- If you’re interested in finding a mentor, register on Career Connections and create a mentee profile, providing as much information as possible. Note: Career Connections is only available to ICAS Students (above the age of 18) or fully admitted active Members who have paid their subscription. If you have any access issue queries, please contact careermentoring@icas.com for assistance.
- Before you register, we suggested that you whitelist the icas@onpld.com platform email address, so that you receive all auto-emails from the platform.
- You then use the search function to generate a list of all suitable potential mentors who match your requirements.
- Once you have selected your preferred mentor from the search results, you can either submit a mentoring request or send a direct message to ask for more information.
- The selected mentor can then accept or decline the request (providing a reason for declining) or respond to the message.
- If your request is accepted, you should initiate contact via the platform and arrange to meet (online or in-person) for an initial conversation.
From the initial meeting onwards
Once your mentoring request has been accepted, you and your mentor should meet, online or in-person (if preferred and possible), to explore and confirm the potential of the mentoring engagement.
Upon connecting, you should expect:
- To always be treated, and to treat others, with respect.
- To be challenged and supported by your mentor to achieve your goals.
Reach an agreement of mentoring
A successful mentoring relationship requires clear communication from the outset. To help achieve this, we recommend that you use our template to create a Mentoring Relationship Agreement. This should outline your shared understanding and expectations for the mentoring relationship and be referred to regularly throughout your mentoring engagement to help keep everything on track.
Using the template, you and your mentee should agree to the following:
- Your goals and expectations – what you hope to achieve through the process. These goals may be direct and/or emergent and could range from becoming more self-aware to expanding your professional network.
- Confidentiality – note if any third parties need to be informed, and if so, what can be discussed with them.
- Availability – how often you will be available to meet.
- Duration of the relationship – e.g. three months, six months, one year.
- Meeting and communication format – will you meet online, by phone, in-person.
- Roles and responsibilities – who will set the agenda for meetings, etc.
- How feedback will be handled.
- Review and evaluation – of the relationship and your progress.
Use our Career Connections Guidelines
Our Career Connections Guidelines explain the whole process in more detail and will help you and your mentor maximise the benefits of the mentoring experience. You can download the guidelines below or find them in the ‘Resources’ tab on the Career Connections platform.
Get started at Career Connections
Log in to Career Connections (with the email and password you use for your icas.com profile), set up your mentee profile and get started – and remember you can always find all the help and information you need in the 'Resources' tab on the platform.