I have ran careers events for opportunity-seekers every six months for past 3.5 years. Be they in-person, or virtual, a lot of effort goes in to a few hours of contact time between prospective applicant and exhibiting organisations. It got me thinking that there must be some added value EqualEngineers can offer when bridging the connection between our stakeholder groups. I thought mentoring could be a solution, but I put the idea aside.
In 2020, we recruited our first set of 22 Student Ambassadors representing 14 UK universities. It became clear to me through working with them, that similar cultural barriers are being experienced at universities as are experienced in the workplace. We were in the middle of a roll-out of our Engineering a Winning Workforce: Engaging the Majority training to the UK nuclear sector, and comments were coming up which were similar to those identified by our Student Ambassadors.
Mentors and mentees completed a registration form, from which we could do our matching. We created an onboarding module delivered through our EqualEngineers Online Academy where we auto-enrolled participants to take this whilst we were doing the matching. We have provided a comprehensive set of resources to support our participants on their mentoring journey from January to May 2021.
I am excited to see how our participants will support one another over the coming months. Moreover, it is my hope that some of the barriers which we commonly see crop up will start to become eradicated through education. Connections being made through our programme will provide participants with networks for the future.
As well as our student programme, we are working on a cross-sector mentoring offering too, connecting up engineers across industry, academia and government.
If either you or your organisation would like to take part in our future programmes (as a mentor or mentee), then please register your interest here or contact me for more information;
- Student Mentoring programme (with professional mentor) – Register Here
- Industry Cross-sector Mentoring programme – Register Here
Written by Dr Mark McBride-Wright CEng MIChemE, Founder & Managing Director, EqualEngineers