Erasmus University Rotterdam likes to stay connected with its alumni. In 2020 the platform MentorMe was launched to get to know them better and to allow current students to connect with alumni. It provides students with valuable career advice or a sounding board for everyday things they encounter while studying. So far experiences exceed all expectations. “The alumni network is overwhelmingly generous. They really want to stay connected and help students”, says Bonita Qaiser from the Alumni Relations Office.
Alumni are the proud harvest of the university. As Erasmians they live out the university’s mission of ‘making positive societal impact’ and can be a role model to current students. The platform MentorMe is intended to stay in touch with alumni and to connect them with students to give advice on a variety of topics. The initiative contributes to embracing the Erasmian Values as it requires an entrepreneurial and open-minded attitude. It is inspired by a similar award-winning platform of Rotterdam School of Management. But what makes the platform so valuable? Bonita: “Before there were several initiatives by different schools and that made it more fragmented. Not to brag, but I think with MentorMe we are ahead of other universities. We didn’t just start a platform to interact with alumni, we also found a way to make it successful.”
The concept is very straightforward. To become ‘mentors’ the alumni are invited to make a profile on the platform. They can connect it to their LinkedIn account or manually add their work experiences and the program(s) they followed at Erasmus University Rotterdam. As mentors, they can indicate what type of advice they are willing to give, for example on how to start a business, how to apply for a master or how to get more comfortable in a new (study) environment.
Students, or ‘mentees’, can connect with alumni with a profile that is relevant to them. They can sign up as mentees voluntarily or as part of a course on career planning. Bonita noticed that alumni are extremely willing to give back. Especially international alumni seem motivated to sign up as mentors: “They remember how it was to be a student and know it can be harder to find your way if you are from abroad. They didn’t have a network that they could plug into after their studies", explains Bonita
Bridging the gap
One of the mentors is Inês Pereira from Portugal. Inês works at the finance department of Unilever and graduated at Erasmus School of Economics in 2016. She has been very active on the platform and had several video calls with students where she gave tips on how to improve their CV or on how to apply for an internship. “I’m curious by nature and it gives me a lot of energy to talk to students. It doesn’t take a lot for me, but I can have a huge impact on them. I wish something like this existed when I was a student. Of course, I can’t tell students what to do, but I do recommend they try different internships. And I always tell them the most important thing is to do something you like.”
Adnan Aliyev participated as a mentee during his Bachelor Economics and wanted to orientate on the job market. “After talking to the mentors, I had a perfect view on which sectors I should target. I received four offers from various big companies. Looking back, I especially enjoyed the friendliness of the mentors.” Bonita sees the platform bridges the gap between the student life and the working life that follows. “It gives students access to a professional network before they even graduated. Also, it helps them a lot with their personal development. Mentees get inspired and become more confident. I believe this can also improve the employability of students who graduate here.”
Just the beginning
The platform provides an additional avenue for career support as it is partially outsourced to alumni. For the coming year, the goal is to increase engagement from students and to roll out more types of interaction with alumni. This could be in the form of workshops, events, or ‘lifelong learning’ programs. “We just started and there is much more to come. So far the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. All mentors want to continue on MentorMe and the mentees wished that the platform existed sooner.”
