Mentoring 2023

Eloïse Baker, Mentoring Officer Jess Hutchinson, Mentoring Support Officer

Grainne McNulty, Mentoring Support Officer

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 Welcome to
the 2023
SMF
mentoring
programme
Thank you!

Thank you for signing up to mentor an SMF student. The support you provide is an
invaluable resource for SMF students, a resource that wouldn’t be possible without
the time and energy you bring to the role of being a mentor. The mentoring aspect of
the support we provide is guaranteed to all of the students who join us each year. To
give you a sense of the scale of the programme, we are looking to accept over 2000
young people aged 16/17 this year from all over the UK.

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Social Mobility in the UK The issue
Where you grew up, what your
parents did and where you went
to school are huge predictors of
career outcomes in the UK.

So why is the work we do here at the Social Mobility Foundation important? It is still
very much the case that it is who you know, not what you know that impacts young
people entering the top professions. Schools are often not geared up with the
experience and up to date knowledge of the professions, and family members of the
students we support are unlikely to be in the professions they wish to enter. This lack
of knowledge and guidance over the career choices available to students is what has
a big determining factor in the likelihood of a student from a low-income family
attending a highly selective university and then onto a top employer. A lack of
knowledge, networks and skills desired by employers is what is holding students, like
the ones we support, back against their peers regardless of academic abilities. Our
programme of activity aims to level the playing field for high-achieving young people
who have the ability to flourish in the top universities and top professions but lack the
encouragement and networks to help them get there.
 Social Mobility Employer Index

We also work with employers to encourage them to improve their approach towards
becoming more socially mobile. We run the Social Mobility Employer Index, which is
a benchmarking tool ranking Britain’s employers on the actions they are taking to
ensure they are open to accessing and progressing talent from all backgrounds and
showcase their progress towards improving social mobility. It encourages firms to
share initiatives and progress in becoming more inclusive employers and also reveals
which sectors and companies are taking the issue of social mobility seriously. Entries
for 2023 are now open until 9th June 2023! We would love for all mentors to
encourage their employer to submit an entry. You can enter via our website or get in
touch with employerindex@socialmobility.org.uk for more details.

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 Department for Opportunities

Find out more: https://departmentforopportunities.org/

Our campaigning and advocacy arm – the Department for Opportunities – campaigns
on structural social mobility issues and amplifies the voices of young people from
working-class backgrounds. We run an annual campaign to raise awareness of and
close the class pay gap, have donated laptops to combat digital poverty and shaped
Government policy on exams to support students from low-income backgrounds
during the pandemic. Some of you will have may have seen Stay Down, our short film
that reveals the horrors of workplace classism and drew attention to the class pay
gap.
If you’ve not yet seen it do take a look at Staydown.co.uk

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 Who are SMF students?
Academic Criteria:
• Year 12/S5
• Attained 5 GCSEs or National 5s at Grade A/7
• Predicted at least ABB at A Level or Highers

Background Criteria:
• Eligible for free school meals OR
• First generation to attend university and attend a school where a higher
than average proportion of students are eligible for free school meals

We promote our work across all state schools in the UK and visit schools to talk to
potential students to tell them about this free of charge programme from them.
Students have to apply directly to us and we will accept them onto the programme if
they meet our eligibility criteria. The entry point onto our programme is when they are
16/17 and they must meet our academic and background criteria to be accepted. We
are targeting students who are doing well academically and have the potential to aim
high but are from a background where they do not have access to opportunities and
networks that will help them get there.

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 Skills session Work
and career placements
insight and
events internships

University Mentoring
application
support and
interview
coaching

We are working continuously on our regional expansion to work closer with students
and professionals in areas with particular social mobility issues. The Social Mobility
Commission, which is an advisory body to the Department of Education, ranked all
the areas of England on how good they are for social mobility, identifying the area’s
best for social mobility as ‘hot spots’ and the worst area’s as ‘cold spots’. There are 3
regions that have no social mobility hot spots at all – Yorkshire and the Humber, the
North East and the West Midlands, all of which are now being served by an SMF
office. Having a local office means that the support offered to students is greater as
we continue to build links with regional firms to bring more opportunities. We opened
our first office outside London in 2014 in Manchester and now have 7 offices across
the UK with Cardiff opening in February 2019 . We also support as many students as
possible who fall outside one of our target cities. We run residential programmes
throughout the summer and support students via online methods so their location
does not become a limiting factor in them accessing support, so we have students all
the way from the Isle of Wight to the Western Isles.
We have designed our Aspiring Professionals Programme to offer SMF students the
opportunities and networks that they are unable to get from their school or families but
are vital to access professions they are aspiring for. We have split this into 4 ‘pillars’
of support that our work is centred around:
1.All students have access to a professional mentor in the career sector they are

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hoping to go into, who can help them get insights and understanding of that career
and help them develop and practice skills needed to get there. This is the pillar that
you will be concerned with – so more on this later!
2. As far as possible, we secure internships for students in their chosen
profession.
3.We run tailored skills sessions and career workshops designed to develop key
employability skills and develop their networks.
4.Students also receive support and encouragement throughout university choices
and application processes to help them apply and achieve high.

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 Year Round

As mentioned, the students join the programme when they are 16/17 and our aim is to
support them all the way through higher education, and into employment. All the
support we provide is tailored to the profession that the student wants to enter.

Your mentoring relationship will span their time before going to university and
even though mentoring is just one area of support they receive during this time,
you will find that there is overlap with other areas of support e.g. supporting
them as they prepare for their SMF work placement or reflecting with them
about their experiences with SMF events or online webinars.

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 Mentoring: what can you help with?
• Improved knowledge of the profession

• A better understanding of the routes into the profession

• Increased confidence

• Develop professional contacts

• More competitive approach to university applications

• Supporting students in an ever changing and challenging world

There are a number of ways that having a mentor will be beneficial to a student. Your
mentee will be at a critical point in terms of deciding their futures. The aim of the
mentoring is to provide students with someone who can share their own experiences
and help to guide them through an ever more confusing and increasingly competitive
route to university and professional life.
You are there to provide a professional insight, you are essentially a ‘foot in the
door’ for the student, as you are potentially the first professional they are
speaking to in the career or industry they are aspiring for. And you can’t
underestimate just how valuable that is, particularly for their confidence.
We aren’t prescriptive on what you talk about in your mentoring. It may be
looking at university options, Cvs, or broader industry insights. This of course
will look different for each student and each mentoring relationship will be unique.
However, in a nutshell, it is any advice and guidance that you think they will
benefit from.
It’s important to remember, whilst you may be covering a lot of topics, we don’t expect
mentors to have all the answers - you do not need to be an expert in every field or
know all of the answers to any questions your mentee might ask. You can help them
in the process of finding out more, whether it is telling them how and where they can
go to research a particular topic and facilitating that, using your own experiences,
asking friends or colleagues. The SMF is always on hand as well.

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As a mentor, you might find yourself taking on different roles e.g. facilitator, sounding
board, guide, role model. Throughout all of this it is important to be consistent and
reliable – we expect pairs to be in touch at least once a fortnight to maintain the
relationship. We find that the most fruitful relationships engage frequently from the
start. Please do keep in mind the influence and impact that you can have on our
students. You can be really inspiring but with that we would also like you to ensure
that you are supportive and positive in your approach and ensure that any feedback
you provide is constructive. The SMF, and you as a mentor, are not there to tell
students what decisions to make, but rather give them the information and tools to
ensure they make informed decisions.

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 Building My Building My
Options for
Education and

Future: Work

The Toolkit
Building My Building My
Career
Network
Building My
Future: The
Toolkit

Building My Building My
Communication Self-Awareness

This toolkit was designed to create an employability framework for our students,
providing a set of competencies to support their development on the SMF
programme, into university, and beyond. Mentoring is unique as your mentoring
relationship could encompass anything from only one of these competencies
to all of them depending on your mentee and what you can offer.
Students will be familiar with this framework, so we highly recommend in your early
conversations that you can discuss with your mentee what they hope to achieve from
the mentoring relationship, what you can offer and what timeframe this is achievable
in. It might be a series of lots of small goals that encompass many of these
competencies or perhaps one that is worked upon over a longer period of time. These
competencies are designed to help provide a tangible measure of progress for
students and by setting SMART goals with your mentee it will allow you both
the opportunity to see the achievements and progress in your mentoring
relationship.
•For example, within ‘building my communication’ we want students to focus on
communicating ‘in an appropriate and professional manner in person, by email or
telephone.’
•Or you can work within ‘building my self-awareness’ to help mentees to ‘build and
demonstrate confidence in their own abilities’
•These can then be broken down further into practical ‘steps’ or actions to work on

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together such as drafting a SMART goal together, for example checking over their
email style.
We talk about these competencies in more detail in your handbook and discuss
setting SMART goals/objectives in further detail. I am sure you are all familiar with
setting SMART goals from your own professional background but we have included
some useful examples in the handbook. Students on the other hand will be much less
familiar with the concept and so we run sessions with them to introduce SMART goals
to them and how to go about using this method. It’s something to remember when you
start getting to know your mentee as it might require more conversations than you
think to tease out what their expectations are and what they would like to achieve.

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 First Steps to your Mentoring Relationship

One
Break the ice – find out an interesting fact about each other

Two
What do they want to get out of the mentoring programme?

Three
Setting SMART goals

What we recommend is thinking about approaching getting to know each other, and
setting goals in three stages:
1.at first you might want to get to know each other and break the ice,
2.you can then go onto understanding what your mentee wants to get out of the
scheme, what is important, what areas are they less confident with
3.setting SMART goals – your mentee can log these on their MentorNet profile and
using these to track your progress together.

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 Objectives and SMART goals
Examples:

• Mentee to research financial careers and identify three

people/opportunities through SMF, mentor etc. to reach out to over the
next 6 months.

• Identify opportunities to apply for and think about methods of improving

your application.

• Prepare and practice an introductory elevator pitch.

Each 1:1 mentoring relationship is different and, as such, your goals will be very
specific to you and your mentee. Here are some examples of the type of goals that
you will want to be setting. Things around developing their knowledge and skills and
how they will go about putting this into practice in a measurable timeframe.

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 MentorNet

As this is an e-mentoring programme, your communications will be run through our

secure online platform: MENTORNET. We will be registering you on our secure
portal, which is your one stop shop for all mentoring information and activity. We are
using the platform for safeguarding purposes, as your mentees will be under-18 when
you are first put in touch with them, and the portal hides your personal contact details
from each other. However, it also provides a lot of other great functionality which is
designed to enhance your mentoring experience.

You will initially receive a login ID and password to access the platform – you can do
this either via your browser or via the smartphone app. You will see that we will have
created a profile for you, but please do feel free to update your information and
include any extra detail you would like your mentee to know about you.

The important thing to remember is you must check the email address you have
registered with us and the email address you receive emails from us at this will be the
one we use to register you on the platform.

It may then be a few days before you will then also receive an email to notify you that
you have been matched. You will then need to login in order to start communicating
with your mentee.

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Once you have started mentoring, you will be alerted by the platform and sent a
notification email each and every time they message you. You will then need to login
to or visit the app to reply to their message – and you can see the chats icon at the
top right-hand corner where you will see all of your correspondence. We recommend
using the app if possible as this will make checking and responding to messages
easier. To find your mentee, you can click the matches tab on your profile.

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 MentorNet

Your mentee!

FAQs and
Handbook
Upload documents
to your mentee's
profile

As well as messaging, there is a lot of information to help you on the portal including
a resources bank (where you can find copies of your handbook and orientation pack).
Click the resources tab down the side to view these resources.

You can also upload and share documents with your mentee – if you go onto their
profile and upload these under the ‘documents’ tab.

MentorNet does log all the messages sent by you and your mentee, so we are able to
access your conversations with your mentee if needed. Don't worry, we will not be
reading all your conversations(!) but we can check them if we need to.

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 Support SMF will give
• Mentoring orientation pack and handbook

• Bulletins and resources (on the MentorNet platform)

• Reminder emails

• Online mentor meet-ups MMU dates (2023)

May: 15th + 16th
• SMF support Mon-Fri 0207 183 1189 / June: 5th + 6th
mentors@socialmobility.org.uk July: 10th + 11th
Sept: 11th + 12th
Oct: 9th + 10th
Nov: 13th + 14th

Your mentoring relationship is set up to last over the next 9-10 months and we are
here to support that relationship where we can. You’ll be sent a handbook which
details a lot of what we have spoken about here and further information in your
orientation pack. We will also ask you to complete a quick pre-mentoring survey to
help us to better-understand how to support you during your volunteering journey with
us.
We will send you monthly bulletins and messages via the portal to help you
understand what is happening at SMF more generally, what your mentee potentially
might be doing with us, as well as topical conversation starters to help you
understand what you could be discussing.
Whilst the bulk of your conversations will be via MentorNet, we do hold events called
mentor meetups where we will give you the opportunity to invite your student to
connect via Zoom (under SMF supervision).
You are also welcome to arrange phone calls and in-person meet-ups following the
process we will mention in the safeguarding section.
We will also be monitoring engagement throughout the programme so we can support
you better. Our MentorNet portal detects when someone hasn’t responded to an
email after a fortnight and will send a gentle reminder. If several reminders have been
sent without any success, then we will look at the pair in further detail to see if there is
anything further we can do to support or look at reassigning pairs.

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It is worth noting here, as I am sure many of you are already aware, we will match you
to a mentee based on professional interests and try our best to match on location, but
this is not always possible.

You can always come to us if you have any questions or are unsure about something
related to your mentoring or questions about SMF/social mobility in general.

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 Safeguarding
• Messages that contain personal email addresses and phone numbers will
be moderated by the system – there may be a delay in your message
reaching your mentee while we check this

• It is possible to share attachments via our system such as personal

statements or cover letters by attaching these to the portal

• Phone calls can be facilitated by the SMF - no unsupervised video calls

• Flagging with SMF

• Safeguarding officer – Wah Au

We’ll just run through a few really important safeguarding areas to be aware of as our
students are under-18:
1.Please do not share personal contacts with your mentee such as email addresses
and phone numbers. In fact, our MentorNet platform automatically censors messages
with email addresses and phone numbers. All communications should happen via the
portal while the programme is running and if you wish to arrange a phone call or
meet-up with your mentee you would need to let us know so we are able to check and
obtain the necessary parental consent.
2.If you wanted to meet your mentee, outside of the mentoring meet-ups mentioned
before, you will need to organise the date and location with your mentee and then let
the SMF know with 7 days’ notice so we are able to get parental consent. We have
already gained consent for your mentee to meet you in your workplace if you wished
but you would still need to let us know the date and location of you meeting. If you are
meeting outside the workplace, we would recommend a public area such as a coffee
shop, but please let us know in advance so we can ensure their parent/legal guardian
is happy with the arrangements.
3.Phone calls. Once you’ve agreed upon a time, let us know with a few days’ notice
for us to check that we have PC; we will then give you your students number to call
with no Caller ID on.
4.Our platform will allow attachments to go through by uploading these on your

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mentee’s profile under the ‘documents’ tab but please ensure you omit any personal
information such as phone number/email addresses.
If at any point during your mentoring conversations, you are unsure of how to respond
or your mentee discloses information that you need to flag with us, then please
contact us. We have a dedicated safeguarding officer and we are able to access all
your mentoring conversations so we can support you appropriately.
There is a link to our full safeguarding policy in your handbook so please do have a
look at this.

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 Next steps

Matching on a rolling basis

Pairs introduced from the

beginning of April to the
end of May

We are currently matching students to a relevant mentor and launching the

programme on a rolling basis from the first week of April. We will be welcoming over
2000 students onto the programme this year, so please bear with us as this can take
a little while!

Once we have a confirmed match for you, we will upload the relationship onto our
mentoring portal, and you can be in touch with your mentee from that point onwards.
We’re aiming to have you introduced to a mentee across April and May.

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 Thank you!

Once again, a huge thank you for volunteering to support an SMF student and we
look forward to having you on board for the 2023 cycle!

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