The Three Mentor Tracks
Mentor
The Mentor track is good for any student hoping to grow and develop their professional skills and knowledge. In this program, you will meet with a professional who has been hand-selected according to your needs and preferences. On average, you and your mentor will meet three to five times over a period of six to twelve months. The actual frequency varies according to you and your mentor’s availability and your goals. During these meetings, you may ask candid questions of your mentor, and will develop a more in-depth relationship.
Depending on your goals, you might receive coaching or advice about a specific career. This advice might include information about what a career looks like, how to get there, and what you could be doing now in preparation for your future.
Perhaps you don’t have a specific career in mind. Instead, you want an established professional as a mentor, someone with a specific mindset or background, who can talk to you about the challenges that everyone faces in the work place: work/life balance, faith integration in the marketplace, or emotionally coping with a demanding job. Perhaps your interpersonal, communication, or leadership skills need help, and you seek the guidance of a professional as you develop them further.
Your goals are up to you. We find a mentor based on your specific needs.
Job Shadow
During a job shadow, a student typically follows one professional for half a day (roughly 4 hours).
This program is useful for someone who isn’t certain of their specific path. Perhaps you want to make sure the work matches your mental image. Perhaps you don’t know if you want to work for a large firm or for a small firm. Perhaps you don’t know if you want to be in a nonprofit or for-profit setting. Observing a workplace and job firsthand can help you answer those questions.
Career 360
Perhaps you want to work for a specific company, government agency, or nonprofit, but you don’t know what role you want within that organization. Maybe you don’t even know what your options would be within that firm. What if you love an industry but just realized that the job you always wanted isn’t something you’d enjoy, and now you don’t know what your options are? In a Career 360 experience, you have a series of one-hour meetings, each arranged and held individually, with multiple people within an organization. Think of this as multiple one-time mentor meetings, with multiple people. Here, you don’t get the relationship and coaching aspect of a mentorship, or the immersive experience of a job shadow, but you do get a broader sense for how an organization operates. This track isn’t for everyone, but it can be useful if your interests are broad and your career goal has more to do with a company or industry than with a specific role.
What the SPU Mentor Program is Not
The SPU Mentor Program does not facilitate one-off informational interviews or help students find internships.
