MBA degrees are academically demanding, time-consuming, expensive and intensely competitive. Students, in turn, expect high standards in service and care.
Hence a growing number of schools are matching students with various types of mentor to provide help at the different stages along the way.
At London Business School (LBS), David Simpson, acting associate dean for the full-time MBA, says it is hard to overstate the importance of mentoring because “so much of what we do is about connecting people and building networks”.
Staff and faculty members provide formal and informal academic and pastoral support during the course of study and careers centres are there to help take care of the “after”.
In the case of new arrivals at LBS, each applicant has an admissions contact at the school. If they accept a place, they are also paired with a current student whose remit is to help them “transition into the school”.
As far as possible, the matching is done on country, industry and gender.
Hence, in the first instance, your mentor should be able to tell you about leaving your home county (which, with any luck, was their home country too) and moving to London.
They might also help you think about how to make the most of your MBA and give you “survival” advice, for example, about which courses are likely to be the toughest.
In short, according to Mr Simpson, the main goal of the process is to learn “how to use everything to get where you want to get to”.
He contrasts this with the goal of mentoring at the other end of the programme.
The MBA Buddy Scheme, which has been in operation since 2000, invites second-year students to “buddy up” with alumni.
He sums up the scheme’s aim as helping students to “transition out of the school” and to find out “how to use what you have learnt”.
Students are matched, where possible, on sector and job function or location.
This year 86 per cent of the class have signed up – suggesting they feel positive about being on the receiving end of some “wise and trusted counselling or teaching” at this important stage in their career.
While LBS does match suitable people in the above cases, it does not prescribe the parameters of the relationship. Mentor and mentee decide what to focus on, and how and how often to communicate.
At Manchester Business School, a slightly different model operates.
Under the auspices of the Manchester Gold MBA mentoring scheme, first-year students post details online, including their reasons for seeking a mentor.
The business school then oversees a process whereby mentors look through the profiles and select a mentee based on their business interests and career aspirations.
Manchester, like LBS, is not prescriptive about how the relationship develops, but Clare Hudson, who directs the school’s MBA Career Management Services, says they do impress upon students it is “not about someone getting you an internship or a job”.
Mentees are asked to focus instead on career aspirations, advice, personal development and interview techniques.
Mentors, on the other hand, are told that, on average, they will be need to commit 15 hours of time to the job. They are also recommended to take part if they have two or more years of work experience.
So, while younger Manchester alumni are discouraged from mentoring, a new scheme at Insead – the business school based in Fontainebleau, near Paris – takes a different approach.
From this year, female full-time MBA students at the school will be linked up with a woman graduate to help with their job search and the start of their working life.
This has been in response to some research that identified a lack of role models and mentors as the top reason why women do not attend business school.
Cassandra Pitman, an assistant director of marketing at Insead, says that there has been overwhelming interest from female alumni. If the scheme proves popular and successful, she adds, the school might look at spreading it to the whole class in the longer term.
So far, so helpful for students and mentees at these institutions, but what do mentors get out of the experience?
Wouter Berkhout is a secondyear student at Iese Business School – in the University of Navarra at Barcelona and Madrid – which this year for the first time is offering groups of new MBA students the services of a second-year facilitator.
Mr Berkhout says he enjoys seeing people get off to a good start in their course, and that he valued that type of input when he was a first-year student.
In addition, he feels he can learn from observing the dynamics of the wider group.
In the case of experienced workers, such as those who mentor on the LBS buddy scheme and the Manchester Gold MBA, the benefits to the mentor seem less immediately clear.
However, Ms Hudson stresses that a mentoring relationship is rarely a one-way affair and can provide the mentor with excellent opportunities for personal development.
Mr Simpson also notes that alumni appreciate the opportunity to give something back, particularly those with complex career aspirations who feel they have “picked the best route”.
