Would You Like to Mentor Trinity Students and Fellow Alumni?
Whether you have a great deal of professional experience or are a recent graduate of the last ten years, your advice and guidance are invaluable to students starting on their career path or alumni at varying stages of their professional careers. By mentoring, you can provide both reassurance and direction to Trinity students considering what to do after graduation or advise fellow alumni requesting advice or looking to change careers.
What Mentoring Options are Available for Alumni Volunteers at Trinity?
When you decide to mentor at Trinity, you can become as involved as you want. Whether you have less than an hour to give per month or 20, there is a path for you! Below are some FAQs about about mentoring. If you would like to hear more about our different mentoring opportunities, please contact alumnimentoring@tcd.ie.
Mentoring FAQs
Who Can I Mentor?
We encourage all alumni to consider becoming a mentor, regardless of age or experience. Your support can be valuable to students and your fellow alumni at any point in your career.
What are the Benefits of being a Mentor?
- Increase Communication Skills
- Develop Leadership Skills
- Increased Self-Reflection and Understanding
- Skills to Develop Others
- Volunteering Experience
- Flexible Arrangements
- Networking
- Relationship Management Skills
- Goal Setting/Planning Skills
- Giving back to the College
What Mentoring Events Take Place Throughout the Year?
We run both virtual and in-person, on-campus mentoring events throughout the year. We are working on the schedule of mentoring events for the 2022-23 academic year and will post details here as soon as the schedule is confirmed.
If you are attending in-person or online event, please find guidance here.
Is There Any Training Provided on How to be a Mentor?
We have created a Mentoring Quick Guide document that should provide you with necessary information on how to be a successful mentor. There is also a longer Mentoring Handbook that you can view if you require further clarification. There are also several training videos for mentors, which can be found on our YouTube page. Links to all these resources can be found at the bottom of this page.
What is the Time Commitment and How do I Help?
When volunteering as a mentor, you choose your level of commitment. This can range from answering a few questions over email to an ongoing mentoring relationship that may last several months.
With Flash mentoring, most questions are quick one-offs, which can be addressed via email or a brief 30-minute chat. With long-term mentoring, in addition to replying to any emails/questions/concerns, we recommend that you aim for three to six meetings of about an hour, which take place over six months. The ideal number of alumni/students for Long Term Mentoring is one or two at a time.
When you start mentoring, you can help students by discussing a variety of topics, including:
- Your own career path
- What you do – role, your daily tasks & objectives, skills used
- How you got to where you are now
- What did you do when you finished college – What you did upon finishing college
- If you moved abroad – why, where did you go & how that has impacted your career
- If you decided to continue your studies after Trinity and how you decided that
If the student or alumni mentee wishes, you can also perform a CV, Cover Letter or LinkedIn review.
Please note that this is a mentoring programme; you are not obligated to offer a job/internship or interview mentees for positions.
Are there School-Specific Mentoring Programmes or Events?
Our mentoring programme is college-wide; however, the School of Law and the School of Dental Science also run bespoke mentoring events for their students each year. We will update this section with the dates for these mentoring events once they are confirmed.
Where Can I Find Additional Resources About Mentoring?
Please find below various resources that can assist you with the mentoring programme. If you feel your question has not been answered, please feel free to contact us at alumnimentoring@tcd.ie and we will be happy to help.