Mentoring plays a crucial role in the professional integration of students, offering much more than just academic support. It is a real lever for their future careers. Thanks to privileged exchanges with experienced professionals, students benefit from personalised advice, moral support and valuable networks of contacts. This dynamic is particularly significant for foreign students, who discover different codes and cultures.
As part of the AlumnForce Awards 2024, we had the opportunity to interview Solveig Debray Sandelin, Head of Alumni at Pôle Léonard de Vinci. She told us about her career and the mission of her alumni network, a dynamic and committed network that has just won the Mentoring prize. Find out how this programme stood out thanks to meticulous preparation and the strategic support of the AlumnForce platform.
- Mentoring objectives and challenges at De Vinci Alumni
- The successes of the mentoring programme
- The benefits of a dedicated mentoring platform
Mentoring objectives and challenges at De Vinci Alumni
The main objectives of De Vinci Alumni are to connect alumni, encourage their commitment to their school and promote their careers. Engagement includes collaboration between alumni and students. “We aim to create synergies and encourage alumni to collaborate beyond the boundaries of their original disciplines”, explains Solveig.
The mentoring programme also aims to help students enter the world of work. And more specifically, the integration of international students. These students face a number of challenges: adapting quickly to a new academic system, a new culture and finding work placements. “The main challenge is to keep all the parties involved in the interaction and to define the keys to successful mentoring”, she adds. A mentoring relationship is therefore a key issue for these students who are discovering a new country, with a different culture and customs. The mentors help them to question their career plans and the associated know-how, and may incidentally comment on whether or not their plans are relevant to the demands of the market.
Another challenge is to get the people involved to actively adhere to the mentoring approach. Solveig explains: “The idea is really to bring out the demand on the student side and get them acculturated to the approach. Every mentoring interview has to start with a specific question from the student”. Finally, it’s also necessary to get people to realise that the alumni are not there to give them a job or an internship. “They are there to help students find their own work placements“.
The successes of the mentoring programme
The success of the mentoring programme is based on high expectations from members and meticulous preparation. Webinars were organised to raise awareness among students, and a mentor for the operation, an experienced alumni, was able to convey the added value of the programme in a concrete way. Mid-term events were also organised to strengthen the links between mentors and mentees. “It was a great success and the feedback from members was extremely positive“, says Solveig.
So it’s very important to include a communication phase to get people on board! An effective method that has won the support of many alumni mentors and students. And it helped De Vinci Alumni win the AlumnForce Award for mentoring in 2024.
The mentoring programme has been a great success. The experience was acclaimed by those involved, with a score of 8 out of 10 for the quality of the project. “I got rave reviews from a young Brazilian woman who simply dedicated the success of her recruitment interviews to her mentor. Thanks to the mentoring she received, she gained in self-confidence, was able to present her project and her arguments better… and got the job!“.
The benefits of a dedicated mentoring platform
AlumnForce has played a crucial role in centralising and optimising the network’s activities. “The platform has made it possible to bring all activities together in one place. This makes it easier for members to participate online and face-to-face and simplifies the organisation of events and communication with members“, explains Solveig. The skills matching functionality was particularly useful for creating relevant mentor/mentee pairs. In addition, the integration of a diary and registration management has considerably simplified the logistics of events. This allows the team to focus on content and interaction with members.
The integration of mentoring into the alumni platform has been a real lever for De Vinci Alumni, simplifying day-to-day management and strengthening member engagement. “We want to go further and continue to evolve to offer a simple and effective tool to our community“, concludes Solveig.
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