Holistic mentorship is a crucial catalyst that ensures the growth of entry-level professionals in the tech sector, and organizations such as Skills for Hire Atlantic deliver for their participants.
This program under Digital Nova Scotia tackles issues from the unprecedented growth in tech, which has created a significant gap in talent demand and availability.
Let’s explore why their mentorship is deemed indispensable and how partnering with Mentorly helped with the challenges they faced.
Skills For Hire and Mentorship
Skills for Hire Atlantic is a virtual gateway to upskilling and career-building in cybersecurity and data analytics. They provide free beginner-level training to those in the Atlantic Provinces. Their virtual training program includes career development workshops, networking events, and weekly live sessions.
The integration of mentorship is central to their commitment to professional growth, as they recognize it as a vital link to success in tech.
Skills for Hire’s mentorship provides holistic guidance that allows participants to enhance their portfolios and network with industry professionals, thus accelerating their career growth and skill development.
The Need for a Mentorship Pairing Program
Skills for Hire faced a unique challenge with participants from diverse backgrounds with varying skill sets and experience.
The manual process of pairing mentors with students was quite labor-intensive—it involved extensive reviews of many resumes and a considerable amount of communication to ensure that the pairings were mutually beneficial.
A streamlined platform was imperative to optimize the mentorship experience for everyone involved. Thus began the quest for a mentorship pairing program that culminated in a partnership with Mentorly.
We chose Mentorly because of its user-friendly interface. We were able to build the backend to look like the Skills for Hire Atlantic website that our participants are familiar with and use our brand colours, and branded emails” – Alex Rudderham, Project Specialist, Digital Nova Scotia
Mentorly’s Seamless Integration for Successful Mentorship Pairing
The choice to use Mentorly was informed by its user-friendly interface and easy adaptability. A critical factor in the selection process, in which Mentorly stood out amongst its competitors, was the seamless integration with the Skills for Hire Atlantic website.
The platform’s backend was designed to mirror the program’s original look and feel to maintain consistency between Mentorly and their own website. This was achieved by incorporating colors and other design elements related to Skills for Hire’s brand identity and recognition.
Mentorly also provided interview questions for mentors and participants to answer when they created their profiles. They provided a better understanding of each individual’s needs.
It then automated the matching process and recommended mentorship pairings based on compatibility. This is crucial for a seamless and successful mentorship program.
This thoughtful approach enhanced the onboarding process and made it more effective and efficient, too.
Quantifying Success: Mentorly vs Manual Pairing
Implementing Mentorly into the pairing process brought about a paradigm shift in Skills for Hire’s mentorship landscape.
What was once a tedious and laborious process that involved days of meticulous reviews and communications to pair appropriate mentors with eligible participants was now streamlined.
Mentorly used efficient algorithms, thus expediting the pairing process. It also increased the program’s capacity to support a larger number of participants in each cohort. This enabled growth at an accelerated pace and improved pairing effectiveness.
Mentorly’s impact has been transformative—it turned an overwhelming challenge with significant scope for errors into a seamless and efficient process that provides instantaneous results. This enabled Skills for Hire to build better and more lasting connections that touched the lives of all participants.
By leveraging Mentorly, we streamline mentorship pairings, significantly increasing our capacity to support numerous program participants in each cohort. What used to take days for mentorship pairings can now be accomplished instantly through Mentorly’s recommendations, ensuring swift and effective connections between mentees and mentors.”- Alex Rudderham, Project Specialist, Digital Nova Scotia
Highlights of Mentorly’s Impact
One of the biggest benefits of Mentorly is the level of simplicity it has to offer. The customizable homepage allows organizations to provide a comprehensive introduction to their programs and showcase important information and insights about their dedicated mentors.
To ensure that both participants and mentors were comfortable, and faced with a familiar layout in the face of an otherwise daunting process, Mentorly’s customizable homepage can match with the organization’s brand image.
Beyond simply solving a problem impacting Skills for Hire’s overall efficiency and output, Mentorly has also helped inspire and reimagine what mentorship can look like. Mentorly addresses the specific needs of each user and encourages a broader shift in the overall approach towards mentorship.
By building upon the innovative features that Mentorly has to offer, Skills for Hire Atlantic is poised to expand its programs. They are now set to introduce facilitated group sessions in addition to their one-on-one interactions!