Inside Edge Mentoring

Welcome to Inside Edge Mentoring

What is Inside Edge Mentoring?

Inside Edge Mentoring is offered by DMU's award-winning Career Team and gives students and graduates the opportunity to be mentored by industry professionals. These mentors share invaluable experience and insight and we have fantastic range of mentors to choose from.

This scheme is all about making connections with, and learning from, professionals who have begun their career path and who have significant industry experience to share with you. Inside Edge Mentoring provides you with the opportunity to engage with and ask questions to professionals who are willing to share their wisdom and experience virtually, in person, in groups and in one-to-one mentoring settings.

  1. What is the aim of Inside Edge Mentoring?

    This scheme aims to improve the career readiness of our students using industry mentors. Simple. We will do this through the scheme by:

    • Helping you to identify and understand your current level of career readiness
    • Exploring and capturing a vision for your future professional self
    • Engaging you with a range of professionals to help you learn from them and their experiences
    • Encouraging you to act on what you have seen and heard from the mentors to affect positive change in your life
  2. What does Inside Edge Mentoring look like and what would I be doing?

    This scheme has been designed specifically to provide a fantastic experience for students and graduates who want to engage in mentoring. As such, the entire process will comprise the following:

    • A stage-by-stage approach, which develops your understanding of mentoring to prepare you to engage in it effectively
    • A process that from the very start and at every stage builds on your career readiness using various activities and approaches
    • Support every step of the way in the process with the scheme leader to tackle any questions or concerns that you have
    • A mix of taught sessions, reflective exercises, self-assessments, mentoring activity, and practical action setting
    • A clear pathway that allows you to go as far as you want to go in the process and as deep as you want to go into mentoring
    • A fully supportive culture that values and respects your studies, your health and life commitments and is tailored to suit
  3. What are the benefits of Inside Edge Mentoring?

    There are any number of benefits to engaging in Inside Edge Mentoring. These can include elements such as:

    • An opportunity to build and grow a mentoring relationship where you can transform yourself by developing awareness, insight and professionalism.
    • An opportunity to delve deeper into a person’s career gaining detailed in-depth information that can be acted on to help navigate one’s own path in industry.
    • A safe, non-judgement space to spend time with professionals who genuinely care about your development and listen to you, your concerns, questions and aspirations.
    • Meeting with and learning from multiple schemes mentors based on your requirements

    The scheme offers a wealth of mentoring activity including (but not limited to):

    • Traditional one-to-one mentoring relationships
    • Large group mentoring sessions with multiple mentors
    • Single mentor small group mentoring sessions
    • Multiple mentor allocations to individual students
    • Industry specific and non-linear career mentoring sessions
    • Virtual and face to face mentoring opportunities
    • Individual support for approaching mentors outside the scheme
  4. What do students and graduates say about Inside Edge Mentoring?

    We asked our mentees to evaluate their experiences on the scheme and what they would say to others thinking of getting involved. Here’s just a few from so many great reflections:

    This is once in a lifetime experience ... [It] is one of the best things I did at university; it helped me in depth with being more confident, creating my own network and meeting new people. - Evridiki

    Absolutely go for it! Andy has understood my needs and the goals I wanted to get out of my mentorship scheme, and found the best mentor to suit my needs.

    It has been a pleasure speaking with my mentor, Pete, who has given me insightful ideas about my interview, how to be effective at work and how to negotiate anything in life. - Prince

    I would definitely say to get involved in mentoring. Whether you know your direction or not, having an expert ... helps provide a perspective you wouldn’t normally get to experience. The mentors are rich in knowledge and the compatibility factor within this scheme really helps you find a mentor suited to you. There’s so much out there that we don’t know, so many parts of us as students that need to grow, and this helps from a real world perspective, not just academic. - Kush

    Definitely do it. ... Your mentor is personalised to you because of the work that Andy puts in behind the scenes, and this provides an edge over finding your own mentor. Andy's scheme comes with all the benefits of informal mentoring (e.g., arranging it yourself) but you also gain Andy. This itself provides an additional layer, as he is available for any questions or also to mentor on his experiences (instead of a subject specific mentor). He has had some amazing experiences and really adds an extra benefit. - Emily

    The mentoring is tailored to your career goals, it's guidance to improve your CV, understand the way you express in interviews, what to expect in an interview and understand how recruiters hire. Mentoring also has allowed me to make connections with other professionals. Throughout the scheme I appreciated it the flexibility of the mentoring meetings and the advice and guidance I received. I feel extremely lucky to have joined the mentoring scheme and I would recommend it to all students to join. - Nancy

 

Think of the Inside Edge Mentoring scheme as a journey, which will help you as a student or graduate to learn, grow and to change in new and exciting ways with the support of professional mentors and the scheme staff.

This short film tells you more about what we do:

Quality at the centre of all that we do

 

Our scheme has proudly been twice awarded the Approved Provider Standard kitemark by the NCVO for its delivery of high-quality mentoring and continues to strive for excellence in every aspect of the work we undertake with mentors and mentees.

Scheme newsletter 

 

Check out our newsletter to tell you more about what we do and how, with insight into our work and offer to you: 

Inside Edge Newsletter (January 2024)

Want to find out more?

If you want to find out more about the scheme and come to an information session to help you decide if Inside Edge Mentoring is for you, please fill in and submit our expression of interest form, and then we will get back to you. Thank you.

 

Scheme Manager:
Andy Morris 
Employability Mentoring Manager
E: andy.morris@dmu.ac.uk
General scheme email: mentoring@dmu.ac.uk