A Good Fit Crucial to Mentoring

When building or growing corporate mentoring programs, one of the most challenging tasks is making sure the program not only has a sufficient number of mentors, but also the right ones. Instead of putting out an open call for anyone interested in becoming a mentor, targeted recruitment involves seeking mentors with specific skills, experience and expertise based on the current gap between mentee needs and mentor abilities.

While the initial mentor recruitment strategy is designed to cast a broad net to attract a large base of mentors with diverse skills and expertise, more must be done to ensure that mentors are available to meet the specific needs of the mentee population.

Mentees’ mentoring needs can be analyzed to identify shortcomings in the mentor pool. This process, known as gap analysis, seeks to quantify and compare the needs of mentees with the areas of expertise of the mentors. The gap between mentee needs and mentor qualifications shows the target for the next wave of mentor recruitment.

How It Works
Gap analysis is easy to conduct with the right tools in place. It is driven by a mentoring profile form completed by each mentee and mentor at the outset of the program.

Whether using an online solution or a paper form, the mentoring profile should have predefined selection lists for “areas for development” for mentees and “areas of expertise” for mentors. Participants check all options that pertain to their areas of interest or capabilities, and that information is used to detect imbalances in potential mentor-mentee matches.

To perform the gap analysis, managers must count the number of mentees with each development need and list them in descending order beginning with the need expressed by the largest number of respondents. Let’s say, for example, that in the mentoring program for a major health insurer:

• 47 of the mentees are seeking to increase their understanding and knowledge of the health care industry; 39 are hoping to learn more about government products; and 37 want to learn more about finance.
• 39 mentors have expertise in health care industry knowledge, 12 in government products, and 11 in finance.
• In this case, the biggest gaps are in the government products and finance areas, alerting the program administrator to the need to recruit mentors with expertise in these topics.

Gap analysis can also be conducted on company divisions, geographic location or other demographics. If a program is heavy with mentees from operations and mentors from manufacturing, for example, mentor outreach can be focused on recruiting more mentors from operations areas of the company. Gender, race and age can also be reviewed to see if there is a gap between the composition of the mentees and the mentors.

For small mentoring programs, the development needs, areas of expertise and other participant demographics can be tracked and counted via a spreadsheet. Larger programs can take advantage of corporate mentoring program technology that automatically provides demographic reports. Either way, the results offer a guide for targeted mentor recruitment.

Other than that, the tactics are identical to standard recruitment, including:
• Seeking nominations from senior managers.
• Making mentoring part of manager development goals.
• Identifying high-potential employees.
• Conducting a call for mentors using company newsletters, bulletin boards, intranet, posters and email.
• Showcasing mentorship success stories at manager meetings.
• Building a culture where mentoring is viewed as an integral part of the work experience.

By utilizing gap analysis and targeted mentor recruitment, managers can set the stage for more successful matches that truly meet mentee needs.

Beth N. Carvin is the CEO and president of Nobscot Corp., a global technology firm that focuses on employee retention and development. She can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.