How One-on-One E-Mentoring Works
“My mentor gave me the confidence to continue in my major, knowing that it is not impossible to be a successful professional woman.” MentorNet protégé
MAKING THE MATCH
To participate in the One-on-One E-Mentoring Program, protégés and mentors complete online profiles covering 34 variables. Doing so typically takes about 10 minutes. They provide information about their backgrounds and interests, indicating topics of greatest interest (work-life balance, job search, career planning, and race and ethnicity issues, among others), and expressing their preferences for the characteristics of the mentor or protégé with whom they wish to be matched (school attended, education level, gender, ethnicity, and the like).
Using proprietary, patent-pending systems, MentorNet matches protégés with mentors. Since August of 2003, protégés have been presented with the anonymous profiles of up to 5 potential mentors (ones that the algorithm predicts are the best matches). The protégés then can choose one of these suggested mentors or ask MentorNet to make the match automatically. If, after two weeks, the protégé has not chosen a mentor or asked MentorNet to choose one for him/her, MentorNet matches the protégé with a mentor if there is one in the pool who is a good fit based on the protégé’s profile.
Between 1998 and mid-2007, more than 19,000 mentoring pairs had been matched, as seen in the chart below.
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