Get Involved

Mentoring experience is a sought-after attribute which is transferable into your own place of work. This rewarding experience will offer you the chance to inspire new graduates, but also develop your own professional and personal skills-set. Furthermore, you will:

• Create a partnership with the University
• Raise awareness of graduate opportunities at your organisation
• Support talented individuals to achieve their goals
• Add an extra specialism to your own CV
• Use new skills within your current role and organisation

For Lincoln Connect we use a secure, online platform called Graduway that allows students, graduates, and employers to network virtually. The site is easy to sign up to and functions in a very similar way to LinkedIn, the main difference being that all users are associated with The University of Lincoln.

1. Register on the Lincoln Connect platform
2. Ensure you complete your profile with as much information as you can, as the site uses an
   algorithm to match you with potential mentees based on industry, degree subject, and
   location
3. Set your mentoring preferences (Mentoring>find a mentor> settings). This allows you to have total control over how many people you want to mentor, how much time you can give and what kind of mentoring you want to offer. You can even seek a mentor yourself!
4. Once you have signed up, you will be able to view the information feed, advertise job opportunities and join groups: this will allow you to keep up to date with University of Lincoln news, events, and share information about your company.
5. We recommend posting an introduction to yourself on the main feed, who are you, what is your career, and how would you like to help students? Be yourself, and we recommend adding an interesting photo or video to your post to increase engagement.
6. You can also search the ‘directory’ to find current students from your course. Whilst we encourage students to message mentors directly, mentors are also invited to make contact with students.
7. Use the ‘message’ function on the site to develop your mentoring relationships – all the mentoring will take place online via Lincoln Connect. You may invite your mentees to connect on LinkedIn, but we advise you not to give out personal social media or contact information.
8. You will also be contacted by our Widening Participation Officer for support using the platform

Mentoring is a relationship in which a more experienced person helps to guide a less experienced person. Successful mentoring relationships should provide both parties with opportunities for growth of knowledge and expertise in their chosen area. As well as the satisfaction of helping others you can gain experience in leadership, communication, and management skills.

Mentoring should not be:

• A personal relationship
• Time-intensive
• A recruitment tool for jobseekers and/or job advertisers (though positive mentoring
  relationships could lead to opportunities in the future!)

It is important to recognise that many of our students will lack confidence and may not feel they are able to make the first interaction with mentors. Whilst the team will try to manually match students with mentors, we do ask that mentors share posts on the main feed of the platform and ensure their profile is up to date to encourage students to reach out. 

While some students will seek a greater level of mentoring, you may also find that others will reach out to only ask one or two questions with little further interaction. Please do not feel disheartened if this happens. Your response to that question will likely have already helped that student. However, should you have any worries or concerns please do get in touch with a member of the team. 

We are also looking for volunteer Lincoln Connect Champions to support us to increase engagement with the diversity and inclusion groups on the platform. The groups include:

• Disability Network
• Care Leaver Network
• Mature Student Network
• Racial Diversity Network
• Social Mobility Network

We are looking for Mentors who can commit to posting on a group of their choice a minimum of once per month. The posts should be related to the group topic and include insights into your own experience, advice, useful resources, and reflective questions.

Please contact Freddie Copson (JCopson@lincoln.ac.uk) if this is an opportunity you are interested
in.

Thanks for your interest in becoming a mentor. Please sign up directly via www.lincolnconnect.co.uk, speak to a member of the Careers and Employability team, email careers@lincoln.ac.uk, or call us on 01522 837828. We can then discuss your requirements and help you to get signed up to the site. We look forward to hearing from you!

As a Lincoln Connect mentor, you are encouraged to join us for one of our informal online training sessions; Lincoln Connect - How to make the most out of being a mentor. You can find more information about any upcoming sessions by contacting the team at alumni@lincoln.ac.uk.

Are you keen to share your experiences or are you the expert in something from your chosen field? For example, if you undertook a work placement or received support from your lecturers or the careers service, is what you learnt something you wish to share with other alumni, current and prospective students?

Make sure that the topic is accessible to all and will provide a good insight that many can learn from. Some good topics may relate to your decision-making process when applying or choosing your course, work placements, study abroad experiences, how you overcame any issues, any support you received, work experience, an internship or graduate scheme you took part in. You may also have insight into your chosen industry, be able to offer advice on networking or how to get into this field.

Above all else, your valuable experiences can offer advice and support to fellow alumni and students.

The main audience for you blog post will be fellow alumni, current students from across the institution, not just your course, and any prospective students who may be interesting in the University of Lincoln. Therefore, please do explain any jargon that you use that might not be common knowledge and use language that is appropriate for students younger than 18.

An idea blog post will be approximately 500 -750 words and can include links to website and any images you wish to share.

Please bear in mind that if approved, it will be posted on our Alumni Success Stories Blogsite so will be read online.

If you could please send your blog post and any images to the alumni team at alumni@lincoln.ac.uk. It will then be reviewed by the team and if we deem it appropriate, we will share this to our blog site or any other places that may be of benefit to our audiences.

If you would like to run an initial topic by the team before you start writing, please do feel free to drop us an email and we can advise on the topic or angle you wish to take.

Equally, if you have any questions at all, please get in touch.