Career Mentoring

Applications are now closed for the Careers Service’s 2024/25 Career Mentoring programme. We will be running two programmes in 2025:

  • The Graduate Career Mentoring programme is open to all students graduating in summer or winter 2025; applications will open in late spring and the scheme will run from early summer until early autumn.
  • The 2025/26 Career Mentoring programme is open to all students (including postgraduate taught & research students) studying in the 2025/26 academic year, except for foundation and first-year undergraduates; applications will open in early autumn, with the scheme running from mid-autumn until spring 2026.

If you wish to register your interest for one of the above programmes, you can do so at the following link, and we will contact you when applications are open:

The mentoring programme will match you with an industry professional to support you with career planning, decision making, and preparing for your next steps after university.

It will be conducted through the Mentorloop mentoring platform, where you will be matched with your mentor and can message and schedule meetings with them. Your mentor will provide coaching and support to help you begin to plan your career and choose your next steps after you graduate and start to navigate the job market.

We expect a total time commitment of around 3-4 hours for the Graduate Mentoring scheme and 6-10 hours for the 2025/26 Career Mentoring scheme, as we recommend holding a meeting roughly every four weeks, lasting 60 to 90 minutes each. However, this may be more or less frequently, depending on your mentor’s availability and how often you wish to meet.

If you are a postgraduate student, you are also eligible to be a Career Mentor as well as a Mentee in the 2025/26 Career Mentoring scheme. Once applications for this scheme are open, there will be a form linked on this page for mentees to sign up; please fill this in, and there will be the option to apply to be a mentor as well. For more information on the mentor’s role, please see our employer website.

If you are an alumnus or an industry professional who is interested in being a Career Mentor for our students, please visit our employer website for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I gain through having a mentor?

Your mentor’s role is to guide you towards making informed career decisions, to help you navigate how to find and apply for opportunities, and to give you some tips to help you succeed once you start. They will share their own personal career journey, provide insights into their current role/previous roles, and highlight the decisions they have made and the steps they have taken to get to where they are.

The discussions you have with your mentor aim to help you:

  • Explore your career options.
  • Overcome any barriers in your career planning.
  • Start to build your professional network through direct contact with your mentor.
  • Develop the skills and confidence you need to succeed in your career planning.
  • Improve your employability, CV, and performance at interviews.
  • Gain a competitive edge over other candidates.

How will I be matched with a mentor?

When you are invited to register for Mentorloop we will ask a number of questions about what you are looking for in a mentor, including what occupation area you are interested in and what skills you are looking to develop. Based upon this information, we will then try and match you with an appropriate mentor who is a good fit for what you are looking for. Please bear in mind that we may not be able to ensure a perfect match between mentor and mentee, however we aim to match mentees with mentors who share some commonalities, and who we feel will be able to support our students effectively. Even if the mentor is not in your ideal role or sector, they may still be able to support you and share career insights that will assist in your career planning.

How will the mentoring relationship work?

The mentoring relationship will be facilitated through the mentoring platform Mentorloop. Your mentor may not be in the same city, or even the same country as you, and so there is the option to conduct the mentoring relationship entirely online. However, if you both live in the same city and wish to meet in person, this is something you can decide with your mentor.

We recommend that you aim to meet a minimum of four times with your mentor across the mentoring relationship, although if you wish to meet more times and your mentor is able, we encourage to do so. In the meetings, you will discuss your career aspirations with your mentor and set goals for you to work on in between meetings. If you are unsure of what goals you specifically wish to work on at this stage, don’t worry! Further guidance will be provided if you are accepted on to the programme, and your mentor should be able to help you to identify and break down your goals with you.

What support will be available to me?

The mentoring team will be monitoring progress and feedback to ensure that your mentoring relationship is going smoothly. If we identify that your relationship may be stalling, we will reach out to you and your mentor to check in with you and see if there is any further support we can offer.

We also plan on conducting drop-in sessions both online and in-person where you can flag up any issues you may be having in your mentoring relationship. Further details will be confirmed in due course.

You can also contact us at mentoring@manchester.ac.uk if you have any further questions.