Mentors' pages

If you have at least three years of working experience, you can join the Oulu University Mentoring Programme!

Mentoring is not only a great way for students to discover their future career. It is also a rewarding experience for mentors. The discussions with a student can challenge you, make you question your views, and give you new perspectives to your own work. As a mentor, you get to develop your supervisor's skills.

"Mentoring helped me to see the working life from a new perspective and to present things in simpler forms."

In the joint meetings or online meetings with all mentors and mentees, it is possible for you to get to know people from different fields of work and find out what is going on at the university. If you are interested in mentoring an international student, you have the chance to get to know another culture and tell more about Finnish working life or special characteristics of an international career.

"Mentoring a shared experience between the mentor and the student. Both learn!"

As a mentor, you come as you are and share your expertise and experience with the mentee during one-on-one meetings. Your career path represents one possible career path to your mentee. As a mentor, you listen, question, challenge, and give feedback. You are not there to supervise theses or offer internship or job positions.

The student is the more active party in the Mentoring Programme and will make sure that the mentoring process progresses. You can comment on the plan and agenda and suggest what could be included in, or propose a different approach to a certain subject area. It is good to ask from time to time, if your mentee feels they are moving closer to the goals set for the mentoring.

Mentoring requires motivation and time from both the mentor and the mentee. The mentoring pairs are committed to have at least three one-on-one meetings or online meetings during the Mentoring Programme. You can meet your mentee for example for coffee, lunch or sports, or online connection.

If you need help during the Mentoring experience, our Mentoring team is there to help you and you can contact us any time!

Please check out the following bullet points. If you answer all them "yes", you are welcome to join our community! If you still are unsure or have questions, please don't hesitate to contact us!

• you have a Higher Education degree. You don't have to be a University of Oulu Alumni.
• you have at least around five years of working experience.
• you work in a small, medium or alrge company, the public or private sector, or even as an entrepreneur. All experience is worth sharing! Even if your career path feels atypical or complicated, that could be the thing that makes you the perfect mentor for someone.
• you have a genuine will and eagerness to guide a student in their transition to work life and openly share your experience.
• you can commit to the programme and meetings for at least half a year.
• you have time to see your mentee at least three times during the Mentoring Programme.
  

Do you already have an Oulu University student in your mind, ready to be mentored? Great! you are both welcome to apply together. Just remember to mention this in your application, and we won't look for another student for you, but you will be matched automatically! Is it still worth applying to our programme, even if you had found your own pair? Defenately yes! Through programme, you can get a structure for your meetings and not to mention the incredible network that you will meet through the programme. Your student gets an access to Mentoring Moodle materials and you will both get to join our induction. Of course you both also get an electronic learning badge, which you can use in your LinkedIn, for instance.

Based on feedback, we have added another phase in our selection procedure. The students will have a chance to get to know mentors already before the matching phase and they will get to wish for their own choice for a mentor in beforehand. Thus, please fill in a short description of yourself and your key know-how in our application form. Nevertheless, the actual matching is still done by the mentoring team. This way we only hope to make even better matches in the programme.

This year…
o our theme is networking and our aim is to oraganize our networking events live on campus. It would be great, if you could join us face-to-face! If you do wish to join our Programme, but attending live meetings is a challenge for you, please contact us! We will sort it out for you.
o to celebrate our programme, we will end our Mentoring year in a more festive way than usually. Put on your fancy clothes, a tie and heels, if you wish, and let's toast on our experience!

To apply, click here!

Any questions? Do not hesitate to contact us! Email to henna.rannanpaa@oulu.fi